Business - Holiday Lighting

Landscapers have been adding many additional enterprises to their businesses in recent years from irrigation to parking lot sweeping. Landscape lighting has been a good addition to many landscape firms. With the holiday season in hand, one additional enterprise you might consider for the future is holiday lighting. The following are some thoughts on the subject:

• While most families do their own holiday lighting, there is a growing number of people that would pay for someone to put up holiday lights for them. This is due to families having limited time with busy schedules, the aging baby boomer population that will pay for the service, and larger houses that are harder for a do-it-yourselfer to light well.
• This is a natural business extension for those landscape firms that already do landscape lighting.
• The major opportunity is at Christmas time. However, there are opportunities for Halloween too.
• This concept can also be extended to the dark winter period to provide additional accents to the landscapes at night. Consider it landscaping with light. Consider the opportunities to add changing light features to the landscape you installed that vary throughout the late fall, winter, and early spring.
• The opportunities for profit include providing the materials (material markup), installation charges, and design charges.
• Please, no more giant plastic lighted Santa's

Gordon Johnson, Extension Horticulture Agent, UD, Kent County.