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Akron company makes tropical trees, tiki huts and exotic accessories
By Paula Schleis
Beacon Journal business writer
Published on Saturday, Oct 11, 2008
The gold standard for salesmanship is the ability to sell snow to an Eskimo.
Well, how about selling fake palm trees to Florida?
A Miami beach cafe is just one of the customers that have found their way to Custom Made Palm Trees, an 8-year-old Akron company that grew out of an entrepreneur's desire to feel as if he were perpetually on vacation.
Michael Beringer has been spreading his tropical mood around the globe, to customers as far away as Kuwait and Israel, as close as Cedar Point and Geauga Lake, and as mobile as this year's Jimmy Buffett tour.
Sitting in his office, surrounded by silk and preserved fronds, real tree trunks and mammoth plant pots, Beringer thought back to his motivation for starting the business in 2000.
Beringer was born in Akron, but his dad kept a home in Florida and he spent a lot of time in the land of endless sunshine.
''I just love palm trees. They make you feel like you're somewhere else,'' Beringer said.
He started wondering how he could capture that feeling and turn it into a business.
''I wanted to do something I love, something that gets you out of bed in the morning because you can't wait to get to work,'' he said.
So he decided to bring his beloved palm tree to Ohio, and he found an eager audience, especially when enthusiasm for travel waned after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
''We turned a lot of backyards into an oasis,'' he said.
About 50 percent of the business is still residential, but commercial customers now demand half of his attention. A growing number of them are communities or telephone companies interested in hiding the ''visual pollution'' of cell towers.
Beringer said he's in a niche with few competitors, and — aided by a weak dollar that makes American products more affordable to foreign buyers — he's been fielding requests from El Salvador to India.
The disguised cell towers, in particular, ''are becoming quite popular'' overseas, he said. The artificial palm trees can be as tall as 130 feet. In northern locations, the same processes are used to mimic pine trees, he said.
Beringer uses a lot of rubber and plastic in creating the outdoor palms, while indoor displays are
made of silk or preserved fronds (real leaves that are treated to retain their appearance.)
Even real palm bark can be hollowed out to accept a PVC core, or peeled off its source and reinforced with a cardboard lining so it snaps around unattractive poles to create instant foliage.
Beringer installs the trees himself, from pouring concrete to which 18-foot-tall trees can be bolted, to shaping the fronds into a realistic green cascade.
His office wall displays pictures of a recent job at a West Virginia Comfort Inn, where the atrium around the indoor pool was transformed into an island setting, right down to preserved grass on the floor.
In addition to palm trees, Beringer designs and builds tiki huts and bamboo bar stools, and tinkers with store displays and other tropical-themed products that compliment the palm trees.
Beringer said 70 percent of his customers come from out of state, mostly folks who find him on the Web.
But he's ready to get a little more aggressive, he said. He's planning to hire a couple of part-time sales agents, and he has recently been calling on malls that have been paying crews to water and fertilize live trees that can struggle out of their natural habitat.
''We can put these up,'' he said, motioning to a preserved palm frond, ''and they're as real as can be and they'll last 25 years without any maintenance.''
The trees aren't cheap. The preserved ones cost about $159 a foot. A typical outdoor, backyard variety, with a steel core bolted to concrete, a rubberized trunk and plastic fronds that Beringer says can withstand winds up to 120 mph, costs about $1,000 before shipping.
But he said his customers always remind him that they're worth the cost.
''I love to see the expressions on faces when I finish installing them,'' he said.
It's an expression that still mirrors his own. Eight years after starting his business, the palm tree still works its magic on him.
''When I was working on that Comfort Inn project,'' Beringer said, ''I worked till my fingers bled, and I loved every minute of it.''
Paula Schleis can be reached at 330-996-3741 or pschleis@thebeaconjournal.com.
The gold standard for salesmanship is the ability to sell snow to an Eskimo.
Get the full article here.
Comments
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Posted 12:53 AM, 10/12/2008
that's excellent Michael!! I lived in Ohio for years, moved to Florida almost 14 years ago. I have 7 queen palms & can tell you the real ones need maintained!!! People here would most likely even welcome them at their homes.. business.. etc!!
