“I can’t believe their talking about Christmas lighting in August! Why can’t businesses just take one holiday at a time?”
Does this sound familiar? It does to me. I used to be one of the people who said it all the time. Heck, I want to celebrate Halloween and Thanksgiving just like everyone else; but as I look at things from the other side of the fence as a business owner, I really don’t have much choice. Here’s why.
The Christmas/holiday season is our busiest time of the year, by far. Yes – we are quite busy in the spring and early fall, but when the holidays start getting close, we have to find a whole other gear and really kick it in. The hectic work schedule requires some serious planning because most people want Christmas lights up by Thanksgiving, but not before Halloween. This is usually a three week window in which we have to take care of all of our existing holiday lighting clients, as well as new clients we may be serving. Since we’ve been involved in the holiday lighting game for about eight years now, you can imagine how many projects that could be (it’s a lot). We have Christmas lighting projects in Austin, Lakeway, Bee Cave, Spicewood, Horseshoe Bay, Kingsland, Georgetown and pretty much all over the Hill Country. It’s a lot of work to get done in a very short amount of time; and if Texas dishes up some bad weather, it can get a bit exasperating for all of us – clients and technicians. So that’s one reason we start so early.
And if I don’t get my own Christmas lighting up before Halloween – then it’s just days before Christmas when my neighbors see that the “lighting guy” finally has lights.
Here’s another reason. Our Christmas lighting suppliers usually offer us a discount if we place our orders by the end of August. This is why we offer a discount to new holiday lighting clients if they sign up in the month of August. If we get a discount, our new clients get one too. This is the only time of the year when we can really offer discounts because it’s the only time of the year that we get a price break on the products we buy. Doesn’t everyone want to take advantage of a good sale?
One last reason is cash flow. August is probably our slowest month of the year. It is way too hot outside for people to really enjoy their landscape, so they rarely even think about landscape lighting. In the spring and fall, however, they can’t spend enough time outdoors – and our phone and email explodes. In August, not so much. We have some projects to do, of course, but we don’t have quite enough work to keep all of our team busy full time. (We also try hard not to send anyone home and short them on hours unless they want some time off.) So we go through all of the Christmas lights we are storing for our existing clients (that’s part of the deal!) to make sure everything is working properly. We replace any burned out lamps, check for any wire damage and give everything a good once-over. When it’s time to install those lights, everything goes faster.
Those are the primary reasons why WE start talking about Christmas in August. Thinking about it now, I realize we probably should start in July – but I just can’t bring myself to do it!
If you are in our central Texas service area, now is the best time to contact us for your Christmas lighting so you can save yourself some money and us some headaches, OK? Installation still happens when you want it, but signed contracts make everyone happy. Contact us here and we’ll take care of everything to ensure you get stress-free holiday lighting.
