The Living Christmas Company: rent a living tree that comes back next year

Cut Christmas trees are grown for seven to ten years, decorated for a month and thrown away — and Scott Martin had watched that waste happen from the age of 15, when he delivered trees for a nursery and later saw the same trees in the rubbish. As a landscape architect he kept asking why the tree could not stay alive and come back next year.

Sell the ritual, keep the tree: rent living potted trees each December, then pick them up, nurture them all year and rent them again — one asset, many Christmases.

Martin founded The Living Christmas Company in 2008 under the holiday persona 'Scotty Claus'. Customers booked online, chose size and variety, and his team — seasonal workers with names like Dean Jingle and Greg Nog — delivered potted living trees of two to fifteen feet on routed trucks carrying 20 to 30 trees each. After Christmas the trees went back to a nursery on reclaimed brownfield land, were watered, pruned and geotagged, and were rented again the next December; most clients could request the same tree they had named the year before. Rentals ran from about $25 to $255 depending on the season, with delivery fees on top.

By 2014 the company was tending a crop of roughly 3,000 trees, kept about 90 per cent of them alive year to year, and employed around 60 seasonal workers. Martin's 2012 pitch on ABC's 'Shark Tank' won Mark Cuban as an investor, and the business expanded into the San Francisco Bay Area and into partnerships with Whole Foods and Anchor Brewing, which displayed the trees across more than 100 California locations.

A cut Christmas tree is a strange product: grown for seven to ten years, decorated indoors for a month, then thrown away. Scott Martin saw that waste from both sides — as a teenager delivering trees for a nursery, he would meet the same tree weeks later lying in the trash, and the joy of the delivery curdled. He tried giving friends avocado and other living trees to decorate, until he found a combination that worked and launched a rental service he called The Living Christmas Company.

The model turned the tree into a durable asset. Customers booked online and chose a size and species; staff delivered two-foot table trees up to fifteen-foot institutions' trees in routed trucks carrying 20 to 30 trees per run, and picked them all up again after the holiday. The trees spent the year in pots on reclaimed brownfield land — contaminated or undevelopable property that became an urban nursery — and most returned to customers the following December, geotagged so families could ask for the exact tree they had named.

The economics were seasonal but compounding: one tree could serve two or three families across different Christmases, and keeping the tree healthy beat selling another one. By 2014 the company ran a crop of roughly 3,000 trees, retained about 90 per cent year over year, and employed about 60 seasonal workers. A 2012 'Shark Tank' appearance brought Mark Cuban as an investor, and the business grew beyond its Redondo Beach base into the Bay Area and corporate displays for Whole Foods and Anchor Brewing.

The tree became recurring inventory: instead of selling one cut tree per customer per year, the same living tree generated revenue across many Christmases.

Rental removed the environmental guilt that stopped some families from buying real trees at all — customers who had skipped Christmas trees for years came back.

Naming and re-renting 'their' tree created an emotional bond that cut-price tree lots could not copy and that customers talked about to neighbours.

Choosing slow-growing, drought-tolerant species like the Colorado blue spruce lowered water bills and mortality in California's climate, protecting the asset base.

Sell the ritual, own the asset: one living tree rented over many Christmases turns a seasonal purchase into repeat revenue, and a family's bond with 'their' tree sells the next rental.

The Living Christmas Company turned a one-man idea into a seasonal employer of dozens and a fixture of the Los Angeles holiday scene, winning Mark Cuban's backing on 'Shark Tank' in 2012 and expanding north into the Bay Area. The business also pushed its inventory toward drought-resistant spruces after California's dry years, losing roughly 10 per cent of its crop each season to heat, neglect and transport. A tree could serve several families over its life — Scotty Claus's answer to the rows of discarded trees he had watched since his teenage delivery days.