MACHIAS, Maine — Now that leaf-peeping tourists are migrating home and 100 million pounds of blueberries have been raked, Washington County is gearing up for the big business of Christmas.
Companies such as Whitney Wreath, Worcester Wreath Co. and Kelco Industries support hundreds of Maine jobs during the holiday season and produce more than a million balsam wreaths and other handmade holiday decorations such as garlands and table centerpieces, which are dispatched through the mail to customers around the world.
Mail-order retail wreath prices range from $49.95 for a 30-inch, double-sided, made-in-Washington-County balsam wreath from L.L.Bean to $15.95 for a single-side, 22-inch remembrance wreath from Whitney Wreath, Washington County’s largest wreath manufacturer.
Whitney Wreath produces hundreds of thousands of wreaths a year that are sold through its website; on QVC, the home-shopping television station; and through resellers such as L.L.Bean. During the next two months the company will employ as many as 600 seasonal workers at its 75,000-square-foot facility in Machias and at four other locations throughout the state.
“We are absolutely the largest UPS shipper in eastern Maine,” says David Whitney, CEO of Whitney Wreath. “On a busy day, we’ll ship between eight and 16 UPS trailerloads of individually packaged products, and that will go on for weeks.”
While Washington County is the epicenter of the wreath business, the statewide economic effect of balsam fir products is approximately $25 million annually, according to David Fuller, the University of Maine Cooperative Extension’s nontimber forest products professional.
“Balsam wreath production is a seasonal industry not only in Washington County, but throughout Maine, but on a much smaller scale,” UMaine’s Fuller said. “The manufacture of balsam fir products is a good example of a cottage industry that requires little in start-up costs, although a good business and marketing plan is necessary for success.”
Morrill Worcester is another major player in the Washington County Christmas scene. His Harrington-based Worcester Wreath Co. has been in the wreath-making business for 42 years and operates out of two production facilities. Worcester says he won’t know how many seasonal workers his company will need until wreath orders start coming in, but he expects six weeks of wreath making to begin in a big way in mid-November.
Last year, Worcester Wreath sold 325,000 wreaths used to decorate the graves of veterans in more than 800 military cemeteries throughout the country, including thousands of wreaths the company supplies to Wreaths Across America, the nonprofit organization in Columbia Falls that decorates gravesites at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia.
While the wreath companies have some year-round employees, the nature of the industry means the bulk of the effect is during the holiday season.
Namchu “Kim” Crosby of Machiasport has been making wreaths at Whitney Wreath for the past 11 years. This week she was busy preparing pine cones of various sizes for the wreath production line. Unlike many seasonal workers whose earnings are determined by how many wreaths and other balsam decorations they make, Crosby is paid on an hourly basis.
“I have done many different jobs in making wreaths here, including making bows from ribbon,” says Crosby, for whom English is a second language.
The local and regional economic effect of the balsam industry extends beyond the seasonal workers who are employed by wreath makers and paid on a per-piece production basis. The raw materials required by Washington County wreath producers are “tips” — 18-inch boughs harvested from balsam trees throughout northern Maine and Atlantic Canada by countless “tippers.” The tip harvest usually doesn’t get under way until early November after a major frost, which helps strengthen the needles.
Wreath makers pay between 30 and 40 cents per pound for fresh and fragrant tips, with about four pounds required for a 24-inch wreath. Whitney Wreath expects to buy more than 1 million pounds of tips this year. Whitney says his firm pays tippers anywhere from $75 to $600 a day.
Down Route 1 in Milbridge, Doug Kell has spent more than 50 years building a business around Christmas. His Kelco Industries operation sells wreath-making supplies — ribbons, metal wreath rings, pine cones, Santa ornaments, glittering baubles and wreath-making tools — as well as wreaths and Christmas trees sourced from his 450-acre Sunrise County Evergreens tree farm in the Aroostook County community of St. Francis. An on-site, 3,000-foot landing strip allows Kell, 82, to commute from Bangor to The County at the yoke of his own airplane.
Kell’s company employs 50 people year-round. Starting in October, as things ramp up for the Christmas rush, he’ll add 20 to 40 more to handle demand for nearly 50,000 wreaths and wreath-making supplies.
“Although sales have been down in the last few years, I feel a great responsibility to my employees,” Kell says. “I’ve only been able to provide them with small raises, while at the same time their cost of living is going up.”
Whitney points out that his company’s effect on seasonal employment is a significant economic driver in a local and regional economy that is, by all accounts, struggling.
“People pooh-pooh seasonal employment, but it’s how a lot of people in Down East Maine feed their families,” he says. “The jobs I offer are of vital importance. I can fill them because there’s a need. A day may come when I cannot fill the positions I need, but not anytime soon.”
Wormin, diggin, pickin, fishin, lobsterin, stermanin,harvestin, clamin, wreathmakin, and of course tippin. Gs are right out of bounds in Washington county….
For one of the most depressed counties in Maine- there sure does seem to be a lot of work- albeit seasonal, but spanning many seasons- that can be done for work -should one really want to work???
YUP, so called Washington County Big Business. Illegal Alien Mexicans making wreaths with Imported Canadian Brush.
Imported Canadian brush and wreaths! American workers remove product of Canada labels from wreaths and Made in China labels from berries and place them in shipping boxes labeled MADE in MAINE.. AYUH!
Do you have proof they do this?
Anyone who has ever worked there can tell you this. They get truck loads of wreaths brought over from Canada, rip the labels off and put them back in the boxes and ship them with the Made in Maine tag.
IS why your better off supporting one of the many small home based Christmas wreath businesses here in Down East Maine. Alot of them have websites as well.
You know, unless you and Knightcross actually WORK IN A ONE OF THESE WREATH BUSINESSES, don’t go repeating rumors! Making wreaths out of your home doesn’t make you knowledgeable of what goes on within the business. There are not any “made in Canada or made in Maine” labels on these products. I’ve talked with several people and they tell me that is not true!
Knightcross, just because there are Mexicans living in Washington County does NOT mean they are all illegal. These companies are checked on a fairly frequent basis. Really sick and tired of your put-downs of Washington County! Most of the seasonal work is back breaking MANUAL labor. Whether it be fishing, clamming, wrinkling, blueberries, wreathing, or cutting wood. They all get paid little to nothing for doing the physical work. It is the middle man who gets most of the money. So, next time you see a wreath, blueberries, fish etc, think of the little man who is breaking their back and making piece meal money to get this product out there! A wreath maker makes approx $2 a wreath and what do they sell for in the end?? Blueberry rakers make $3 for a 5 gallon bucket and what do they sell for in the stores??
i thought david’s self promotion would have disappeared from the bdn when sharon mack retire?
glad you are creating jobs though david
I didnt see Chet Childs name in the article.
Oversight?
Many thanks to Worcester Co. for providing wreaths for fallen soldiers graves.
who in the heck is Chet Childs?
Last time I tipped was in ’75. Me and a couple buddies tipped the back lot of a guys Christmas Tree farm and then sold him his own tips! The guy was an a**hat and we still laugh about it to this day. Hope that the statute of limitations has expired for our crime!! We blew the money on beer and a couple jugs of Allens.
bragging about how you stole someone elses property and got away with it? i think we know who the real asshat is in this story.
The the guy died in Thomaston about 6 years later while doing time for “having his way” with his step daughter. yeah…doesn’t right my wrong, but he had a lot bigger hat then me.
Besides….we gave him back his tips!! ;^)
During WWII my Dads’ family was very poor. They had 14 children in their Irish family. The 5 oldest brothers were in uniform. Myfather and his next oldest brother were too young to serve. A big revenue generator for the family was similar to yours even though they were around 11 and 13 at the time. They would go to the back of the scrap/junk yard-climb the fence-take what they needed and then sell the metal back to the junk yard man out front. Their Dad knew what was going on. This went on for a few years. They never spoke of it.
I remember watching my aunt make wreaths one time years ago. Hours and hours sitting in a little tar paper shack behind her house with a tin stove (Calais area). Most were undecorated, but she made piles of ’em and really relied on the income. She had quite a brood of kids and would send them out to do her tipping. Don’t know how she did it…..