We’ve tried to be stealthy about it by beginning our magic in the back of the store and slowly creeping our way forward. But once the Holiday Decking-Our-Halls reaches the Furniture Desk, there’s no hiding the light under a bushel basket. Christmas has officially arrived at the Bruce Company.
The elf team that manages all of this frivolity is excited about the store’s transformation, but realize that many customers believe we are jumping the gun. After all, it’s not even Halloween yet. So instead of being bothered by the comments, we thought that we’d try to convey the enormity of our task in hopes of a little understanding.
We began planning for the Christmas season in late November of last year. And in fact, ideas are already percolating for 2018. Buying begins in mid December, but most of the items are purchased at a large holiday market in Atlanta the second week of January. You did not misread that. While you’re shopping the after-Christmas sales, we’ve set our sights far ahead. Merchandise starts showing up in our warehouse in late March. It’s then priced, organized into the planned themes and binned until we’re ready to decorate.
With our Holiday Open House as the targeted goal, we count backwards from that weekend, assigning 3 or 4 trees a week. Our team often wishes that we could close the store for a week or two, and working around the clock, dazzle you with a big reveal moment, but that’s just not realistic. It takes our decorators 9 weeks to create their vision of the holidays.
When we’ve completed all of the trees at the end of this week, the Bruce Company’s Christmas display for 2017 will highlight 30 decorated trees and themes with almost 18,000 ornaments. There are nearly 600 different ornaments from the very popular Old World Christmas and almost 250 from the German-blown Inge-Glas. And we’re so pleased to carry on the tradition started by the much missed Johannsen’s Greenhouses almost 20 twenty years ago with our own Madison-inspired ornament. This year pictures an ode to the sunflowers at Pope Farms.
So next time you’re in the store, give a Christmas staffer a nod or a smile. They’re just trying to meet the deadline of Ladies Night Out, which kicks off our season on November 2nd from 4-7PM. We’ll have a great raffle that benefits the Henry Vilas Zoo and we’re hoping to put together a chocolate tasting from local chocolatiers. The fun continues with our Holiday Open House that runs through Sunday the 5th. Information about the events and specials can be found on the calendar page of our website.