Supplies of holiday trees could be down this year

Most of the 108,000 Christmas trees have arrived in the islands just in time for Black Friday sales.

Retailers were lining up thousands of noble and Douglas fir trees Wednesday in anticipation of a rush of holiday shoppers this weekend.

“People are calling off and on all day long asking if the containers are here,” said Vicki Lebowitz, manager at City Mill on Nimitz Highway, which has 4,400 trees. “Just like Black Friday holiday shopping — that’s when you’ll start to see tree sales really pick up. The biggest day will be Black Friday. It’ll definitely get better as the weekend comes.”

Lester Arita, acting maritime supervisor for the Department of Agriculture’s Plant Quarantine Branch, said the state has so far inspected 154 containers and held 14 for treatment due to slugs. The state expects 216 containers total with about 500 trees in each container. That’s down from 227 containers and 131,630 trees last year.

Longtime tree seller Richard Tajiri of Christmas Hawaii anticipates lower sales this year due to a shortage of trees on the mainland.

“We’re a little bit down on the count because there’s a huge shortage of trees in Oregon and Washington, a big-time shortage,” he said. “A lot of retailers cut back to half and some closed up because they couldn’t get trees. It’s really huge this year. It’s crazy.”

Tajiri said his supplier “cut me back about 700 trees.”

“The old farmers, they don’t want to grow any more trees,” he said, adding that the business has about 4,000 trees this year compared with more than 5,000 a year ago. “We take a big hit overall on sales potentially, but you can’t do nothing about it. It’s just business.”

Claire Calimlim, a buyer at City Mill, said the company was fortunate to import the same quantity and assortment as last year: 11 containers with about 400 trees in each container.

“We were told that probably there is a shortage on the noble fir, but … we were able to get the quantities we wanted to bring in,” Calimlim said. “We’ve been fortunate enough to sell through what we bring in over the last few years.”

Renee King McDaniel, an assistant store manager at Lowe’s in Iwilei, said employees started putting trees out on Wednesday in anticipation of strong sales after Thanksgiving.

“Typically, they really don’t push for Christmas trees until after Thanksgiving,” she said. “Friday’s usually one of the busiest days for trees because everybody wants to get their trees up right after. It’s probably one of the funnest days of the year — everybody’s out shopping, everybody’s looking for trees. You see that Christmas spirit coming out.”