It's About Time!
Welcome to your March 2008 edition of the
PlanetChristmas newsletter! It is published regularly and covers
relative topics for the Christmas decorating enthusiast.
Here's what you can read about in this March 2008
newsletter:
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What's up with our economy? Reading the news has become
entirely too depressing. The price of everything is going up,
credit is getting tight and Wall Street banks are closing their doors.
If you're selling your house, price and demand are down. Should
you drive a gas guzzler... well... paying for gas is getting painful.
There's
good news and bad news in all of the doom and gloom. Just the fact
our policy makers are admitting there's a recession means steps can be
taken to lessen the pain. Many of us will be getting government
rebate checks in a couple of months. If you're buying a house,
interest rates are down while supply is up. If you've owned stock
in oil companies... congratulations!
The fundamental problem is uncertainty, and we all hate it. No
one knows where the bottom of this recession is so we batten down the
hatches to weather the storm, which just makes things even worse.
I've talked with many PlanetChristmas vendors and they will readily
admit business is down and they're not sure what to do.
Where is the bottom of this recession? I'm betting it's the day
after a new United States president is determined. You'll have to
admit you're probably holding back a little until you know what type of
person will occupy the White House... nothing wrong with it, it's just
human nature to want to know about the country's leadership.
Unfortunately, we have another seven months to worry about things.
This is going to be a rough ride.
But... there's good news for us in the PlanetChristmas community.
Merchants, in order to stimulate people to buy, are going to be offering
some pretty good sales we normally wouldn't see. This is a real
opportunity to make lemonade out of these lemons. Keep your eyes
open. There are going to be some great deals out there.
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I
had the opportunity to attend the International Halloween, Costume and
Party Show (HCP)
in Las Vegas recently. For the record, I went because there were
going to be Christmas vendors displaying some new merchandise. Now
I'll readily admit I'm not a Halloween guy, but I was stunned by the
shear size of this tradeshow. About a third was dedicated to
stationary and card shops, a third to costumes and the rest for the
haunted house industry. To the right is a picture of me with a
Care Bear... just to prove to my wife I was hard at work .)
The
Halloween costume business is doing quite well. Apparently deep in
all of us is an overwhelming desire for one night a year to dress up as
a personality we're really not. I had the opportunity to meet
Elvira. She autographs pictures with "Cruelly yours." Surely
she doesn't dress that way every day of the year. Bottom line is
this is big business. I'll admit to spending time around the Santa
Claus suits, but they seemed so out of place at this gathering.
Then there was the rest of the show mainly dedicated to haunted
houses. Say you need a five gallon bucket of dead cockroaches or a
55 gallon drum of fake blood... I know where to go. Say you want
to purchase a 25' Angel of Death or maybe a standard off-the-shelf axe
murderer... I can point you in the right direction. Need a low
priced coffin or maybe an extra loud chainsaw that doesn't actually
hurt? I'm here to help.
I became quite enamored with the behind the scenes technology of
haunted houses. It's surprisingly similar whether you're a major
theme park or a hobbyist haunter. Most items are
called props or gags and are designed to suddenly move and scare your
normal train of thought. Almost everything is run from pneumatic
cylinders and a basic air compressor. Most props use one to four
air cylinders to induce movement through simple mechanical leverage.
Add some truly frightful coverings to these devices and you can create
very scary creatures. Include a soundtrack and you have a package
guaranteed to make your heart flutter.
What drives the air cylinders and sound effects of these haunted
house props? In many cases they are simple four channel
controllers. They're typically stand-alone and wired to some sort
of trigger device aimed right at you. Once you trip the light beam
or walk across a pressure mat, the prop suddenly comes to life for a
short amount of time and then goes back to sleep.
Does any of this prop control sound vaguely familiar? It
should. Many of us use very similar technology to flash our
Christmas displays to the beat of the music. From a technology
viewpoint, haunted houses appear to be about 7-10 years behind our
over-the-top Christmas displays.
So why am I talking about haunted houses? If you already do a
fancy Christmas display, you might have the infrastructure to also help
someone build a pretty good haunted house. Much to my surprise,
there's a lot of money to be made from running a haunted house. If
you think about it, the more run-down something is, the better it makes
a haunted house work. Nothing has to be perfect, but it does have
to startle you, which is surprisingly easy in a dark environment.
Give some thought about going to the dark side. in a bazaar
way, you can help the local haunter while at the same time getting
geared up for Christmas.
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I'm
seeing some activity for our bi-annual gathering, an event we call
PlanetChristmas Lights Up Symposium or PLUS. There's not a whole
lot of information to distribute just yet other than I'm now wading
through the very lengthy list of volunteers for the Steering Committee.
It's a much slower process than I anticipated because I spend too much
time at tradeshows like the above. I've also engaged a
professional company to help determine the PLUS location. The one
thing I know for sure is PLUS will not be in Tennessee for 2009.
Want an easy way to keep up with PLUS information? Go to the
new website at www.PlusForUs.com.
There's not much there just yet, but it will be the first place new
information is shared with others.
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Looks like LED Christmas light strings will actually be going up in
price for 2008. From what I hear, it's because of the falling
dollar, rising price of copper and infrastructure issues because of the
timing Olympic games in China. Many of the manufactures are also
switching to replaceable LED bulbs for 2008 (just like mini-lights)
which also increases labor and manufacturing costs... though I can't
remember when I had a burned out LED that needed replacing. Bottom
line is if you see a sale on LED strings now, grab them quick.
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The official 2008 PlanetChristmas caps and shirts have arrived.
See all the details at
http://www.planetchristmas.com/Merchandise.htm. Money
collected from these sales goes toward PlanetChristmas and PLUS.
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I've talked to a lot of people over the last few months and it's
amazing how many struggle with knowing where to buy stuff for their
Christmas displays. I always route them to PlanetChristmas vendors
but they still get frustrated. As I looked at the problem, I'll
have to admit building a fancy display can be overwhelming to the
novice. I've been working with many of the PlanetChristmas vendors
about how to address the issue. Looks like the solution is to
create what I call the PlanetChristmas best-of-breed storefront which
becomes a one-stop-shop for the newbie. The vendors are offering
small discounts to the PlanetChristmas storefront. The savings
will be passed along to the buyer and any profits will be plowed into
the PlanetChristmas. Sounds like a win-win-win deal for everyone.
Watch for a storefront grand opening very soon.
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Got any juicy bits of gossip you want to share with the
PlanetChristmas community? Send a tip to
csmith@PlanetChristmas.com
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Many of us have become very creative with our unique signature
automatically added to the end of each post we make in the
PlanetChristmas Forums (My Account/Edit Profile/Signature). You
can have pictures, links, colored text and just all kinds of cool
attention grabbers... but let's be careful. As we enter the busy
Christmas season, the bigger/flashier your signature, the more
irritating it becomes to others. Let's keep it simple and refrain
from blatant advertising. My PlanetChristmas Forums signature is
below as an example.
Chuck Smith
at http://www.PlanetChristmas.com
Don't forget our three
PlanetChristmas rules: [color=red][b]Positive, family friendly and
Christmas centric[/b][/color]
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The PlanetChristmas community has experienced tremendous growth.
Our three fundamental rules of family friendly, positive and Christmas
centric guide what we say and do. The real key to our community is
a willingness to exchange information so others can have better
displays. Come join us!
http://forums.planetchristmas.com
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Talking about a gold mine of information, this is the place! If
you haven't found it yet, go to
http://www.planetchristmas.com/talk.htm. We've recently added
more forums and made it a little easier to get around. Once you're
a member, feel free to change the look and feel of the forums by going
to "My Account/Preferences/Board Theme." Don't forget to update
your profile so others can learn about your display. Also remember
the part of the forums you can see when not logged in is indexed by the
Internet search engines, but once you're a registered member, many new
forums open up but are invisible to the search engines.
PlanetChristmas believes strongly in protecting your privacy.
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The PlanetChristmas radio station is still on-line and available to
anyone with a fast Internet connection to tap into. Find the
details at
http://www.planetchristmas.com/PCRadio2007.htm
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I'm working with a company called Constant Contact to handle the
PlanetChristmas email distribution. There's a new way to register
for the newsletter that complies with all government rules and
regulations. If you want to remove your name from the list, go to
http://www.planetchristmas.com/Newsletters.htm and enter your email
address. You'll be given an option to "opt-out" of future
mailings. Likewise you'll also be able to remove your address from
any future emailings by simply clicking a link at the bottom of the
PlanetChristmas emails you receive in the future.
For the record,
PlanetChristmas
values your privacy and does not share your email address with
anyone.
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Have a suggestion for a main topic or want to write an article for a
future PlanetChristmas newsletter? Send me an email: csmith@planetchristmas.com
If you know someone that really should subscribe to your newsletter,
send them to
http://www.planetchristmas.com/Newsletters.htm
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PlanetChristmas wishes you and your family the best of luck during
these tough economic times.
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Next time: look forward to more Christmas
decorating tips.
Chuck Smith of
PlanetChristmas
