Creating our Christmasland

As most of our customers already know we love the Holiday Season here at Vanderwees Home and Garden.  What you may not know is the amount of time, preparation, and planning that goes into it.  Starting in January we begin attending a variety of trade shows to see what the newest ideas and trends will be for the following year.  The next few months are spent in researching products and selecting the items we will be featuring in store. Then as early as July our Christmas stock begins to arrive.

Here is where a lot of the hard (and fun!) work starts.  As items are unpacked they are matched to one of the themes we are featuring this year and then packed onto carts with other items from the same theme.  We receive products from all over the world so this part of the plan often takes a few months.

 

 

Next the artificial trees arrive and need to be set up, fluffed (arranging the branches), and placed.  We sell over 25 different styles of artificial trees including slim styles, large 12 footers, upside down trees, and even our very own tree called the ‘Thunder Bay’ tree!  Once the trees are ready to be placed we start the heavy lifting of dismantling about 1/3 of our store displays to make room for Christmas.

 Now it is time to decorate, but we don’t stop with just the trees!  Every year our incredibly talented staff design entire ‘rooms’ around our tree’s themes. These rooms include Christmas decorations, gift ware, home decor, and more.  They incorporate pieces of our beautiful BIMA furniture, classic garden items such as lanterns, wall art, silks, and so much more.  The trees themselves are designed in layers, and they feature classic ornaments along with unique items such as elves, lanterns, and even a few birdhouses!  This part of the process takes a number of weeks, and is why you will see us begin setting up towards the end of September (we promise we are not rushing Christmas, it just takes us that long to set up!).  Once the rooms are full  the ‘Forest’ is created. The ‘Forest’ is a section in our greenhouse that we dedicate to showing off our artificial trees un-decorated so customers can see and compare all the different styles.

Finally we focus on the rest of the store, adding unique decorations, fun new products, seasonal items such as christmas lights, and any other neat products we come across!  As the Holiday Season progresses we continue to update and change our decorating as items sell out, or new ideas spring up, so check back often to see everything we have in store for you this Holiday Season!