FULL SERVICE: Brian Millman (left) and Tyler Kupper have created a thriving business delivering Christmas trees with all the trimmings. (Brian Zak/NY Post)
For Tyler Kupper, 27, and Brian Millman, 28, co-founders of the Christmas-tree delivery service Tyler’s Trees, the proverbial business seed was planted when they happened upon a familiar sight back in 2008: a disgruntled New Yorker dragging his Christmas tree home through a packed city street.
The friends — then working in entry-level sports marketing jobs and looking for extra income — thought there had to be a better solution.
“We [reasoned] there were hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers who didn’t want to be doing what this person was doing,” says Kupper, a University of Delaware grad who lives on the Upper East Side.
So the duo decided to advertise their services on Craigslist, offering to pick up trees in Kupper’s native Connecticut, deliver, mount and remove them for one inclusive price.
The handful of customers who hired them that first year — all “people with disposable income who didn’t have the time or energy,” Millman says — was proof of a potent market. “We realized there was a niche.”
Encouraged, Millman and Kupper set out to turn their “rudimentary” beginning into a full-service outfitter, and called on their professional contacts for legal, marketing and financial advice.
“We were entering a space we were unfamiliar with, which was challenging,” says Millman.
But they were also confident in their idea of a turnkey Christmas evergreen service that included a tree skirt, stand, set-up, and removal, starting at $139 for a five-foot tree.
“It’s everything you need for instant holiday,” says Kupper. “It’s literally Fresh Direct for Christmas Trees.”
Over the next few selling seasons (each a mere three weeks long), the duo launched a Web site with an automated scheduling system, finessed their financial models, and partnered with a North Carolina tree vendor. They invested almost $40,000 of their own funds in the process.
The payoff has been slow but incredibly steady: Each year, fueled by laudatory local press and word of mouth, the company’s sales have grown by an average of 230 percent. To keep up with the growing demand, the company began renting Theater District storage space in 2010 to house the hundreds of fresh-cut Fraser firs they stock in a variety of sizes.
“The growth has been unreal,” says Millman, currently an MBA candidate at Columbia. He credits his business-school coursework with making the company more efficient and also says his and Kupper’s networks have provided invaluable help and advice. “It’s really been the collective force of 150 people we’ve spoken with [who have] shaped where we are now,”
This holiday season, Tyler’s Trees is projecting roughly $200,000 in revenue from the estimated 800 trees they’ll sell, along with the fresh garlands, wreaths and Christmas lights they now offer. They’ve also partnered with New York Restoration Project’s “Million Trees NYC” campaign, giving customers a chance to donate $30 to replanting a new city tree and ensuring all their old Christmas trees are turned into mulch for use in city parks.
To keep up with the growing business, Kupper and Millman have hired a full-time operations manager to oversee day-to-day business so they can continue their full-time sports-industry gigs. Except for assisting with deliveries, the duo works remotely from their iPhones, overseeing financials, partnerships and marketing.
“The business has always been geared in a way that it doesn’t disrupt our 9-to-5 jobs,” says Millman. “It allows us to continue our passion for sports, but also [pursue] this entrepreneurial passion.”
They’ve also hired a dozen seasonal employees who possess a personable, playful professionalism they say has earned them repeat customers.
“It’s all about personality and the holiday spirit,” Millman says. “We’re going into someone’s home, we’re interacting with their children, we’re putting this tree [among] some of their prized family possessions.”
Things are going so well, the duo is even considering expanding to Chicago, Boston and Washington, D.C.
First though, they have to get through the “crazy” next few weeks, which promise to be a whirlwind of late nights (Tyler’s Trees delivers until 11 p.m.) and more pine needles than they know what to do with.“I still find pine needles from last year in my apartment,” Kupper quips.
Despite such prickly issues, the duo agree that witnessing their clients’ Christmas cheer is a rewarding, and infectious, perk. “Every house we go into, it’s the start of their holiday season,” says Millman. “That’s what keeps us going.”