Large Holiday Inflatables
Pop Up on Suburban Lawns

Back in 2001, tiny Gemmy Industries Corp. had trouble finding buyers for its inflatable yard figures. Few shoppers, and fewer retailers, wanted to gamble on a huge nylon snowman hooked up to a hand-held hair dryer.

But six years and a few technical improvements later, giant inflatable yard decorations -- in the form of Santas, reindeer, penguins, nativity scenes, many inside inflatable globes aflurry with snowflakes -- are popping up all over suburbia, transforming front lawns into miniature Macy's Thanksgiving Day parades. Gemmy of Carrollton, Texas, (Web site) sells more than 1,000 varieties, including Halloween ghosts, Thanksgiving turkeys and a cast of Christmas standards and licensed holiday characters.

The blow-up figures represent a rare breakthrough in the cutthroat world of holiday decorations -- "the only new development since icicle lights" eight years ago, says Pam Danziger, an expert on consumer behavior and the author of books including "Why People Buy Things They Don't Need." ("Outdoor decorations give people an emotional lift for the holidays," explains Ms. Danziger, who conducts a quarterly shopping survey and estimates that the most enthusiastic seasonal decorators will spend $519 this year, up 9.5% from 2005.

With price tags ranging from $60 to $300, and sizes ranging from 4 to 12 feet tall, inflatables offer "a lot of bang for the buck," says Chuck Smith, who runs PlanetChristmas.com, a Web site for holiday decorators. Many inflatables are lighted within and equipped with motorized fans to keep them inflated, so an extravagant display can set a homeowner back as much as $1,000 a month in electric bills.

Inevitably, a community of collectors has cropped up, and Gemmy has heightened demand among them by retiring each design after a single holiday season. "It's like Beanie Babies, except I hope this lasts a lot longer," says Bob Gibbs, owner of yardinflatables.com, an Internet-based distributor of lawn decorations including a Hanukkah-themed model -- a bear holding a dreidel.

Gemmy has also sagely played into the competition among big-box retailers to stand apart from each other with exclusive merchandise. It makes exclusive designs for each store. Home Depot Inc.'s assortment of Gemmy inflatables this year features Santa on a motorcycle and Santa at a workbench. Rival Lowe's Cos. has an inflatable Santa and elves in a NASCAR racecar. Wal-Mart Stores Inc.'s Sam's Clubs have an inflatable 12-foot-long train pulling a revolving carousel encased in a snow globe. Wal-Mart, Costco Wholesale Corp., J.C. Penney and even grocery stores have a variety of other models.

"Limited runs are more expensive," says Jason McCann, senior vice president of marketing and product development at Gemmy. "But it's the way to keep consumers happy."

Founded in 1986, the closely held company declines to reveal sales volume or profit -- or even to say how many inflatable items it manufactures a year. Over the past five years, the company's work force has doubled to 100, with most of the growth among its creative staff of artists and designers. It takes Gemmy three months to get an inflatable from drawing board to store shelf.

Inflatables are a direct descendant of the Big Mouth Billy Bass, a novelty ornament mounted on a plaque that Gemmy created seven years ago. The trophy fish turned its head and sang "Take Me to the River" and "Don't Worry, Be Happy." Its success got the creative minds at Gemmy thinking about the giant inflatable gorillas and dinosaurs that retailers sometimes use to announce grand openings and sales. In 2000, Gemmy's supplier in China used a hair dryer at the end of a long hose to inflate a primitive prototype.

Gemmy showed it to 30 retailers and had no takers. But by the following winter, Gemmy had figured out how to get a fan mechanism inside the bottom of the inflatable figure. The company's patent calls the product an "airblown inflatable," to distinguish it from a balloon. Stores began selling out of them, and soon they were showing up on eBay -- mostly at inflated prices, of course.

But it wasn't until last year that inflatables took the form of giant snow globes with continuously circulating flakes inside -- a turning point, in terms of the level of acceptance among consumers, according to Gemmy's Mr. McCann. "The globe started popping up on lawns of mansions as well as of modest homes," he says.

Compared with stringing lights along the roof ridge, inflatables are much safer and easier to install. But they do have a tendency to fall over and deflate in high winds, despite having cables designed to hold them to the ground. Gemmy recommends not inflating them on windy days.

"Wind is your worst nightmare," says Kyle Richards, an Omaha, Neb. construction superintendent, who says his neighbors sometimes complain when he displays his collection of 500 inflatables. At Christmastime last year, it sometimes took over an hour to drive down his block.

Mr. Smith of PlanetChristmas.com has added a workshop to his holiday-decorating symposium this year covering topics such as how to clean inflatables (he suggests power washing). As for repairs, he recommends package tape for quick jobs, or needle and thread for bigger ones. "They have become a very popular fixture and people take them very seriously," he says.

A 12-foot $280 snow globe at Sam's Club

Choice inflatables usually incorporate an element of motion. In one Christmas design popular this year, Santa climbs in and out of a chimney with the help of reindeer. A Scooby Doo who slowly arose from inside a big pumpkin was hot at Halloween.

In addition to customizing by retailer, Gemmy also tailors its designs for geographic regions. Santa and two reindeer play poker in a design it calls "North Pole Hold 'Em," which is sold in stores in Nevada. Santa in a big bass boat is on shelves in Texas, Florida and Illinois.

Jason Jones, a 30-year-old Oklahoma banker and owner of 1,000 inflatable ornaments, started an collectors club online last year (at airblownclub.com), and members now number more than 350. They pay a $50 fee to post photos of their inflatable-adorned lawns and swap tips on how to affix inflatables onto rooftops or find rare models. Much of the fee, however, goes toward paying for an exclusive inflatable Gemmy design for club members. This year's design: a Santa in a helicopter.

The inflatable tableau on Mr. Jones's front lawn used to be so big that it would obscure the front of his brick ranch in Muskogee. It's now outgrown his yard, so he sets up his holiday display on the site of a Renaissance banquet facility called the Castle of Muskogee. The inflatables are arranged along a half-mile drive amidst the medieval buildings with special holiday lighting. Admission is free -- although donations are welcome to help defray the cost of security and the lighting bill, which came to $3,000 last year.

Mr. Jones knows firsthand that wind can be problematic. Last week, while he was setting up his Christmas display, the wind was gusting about 35 miles per hour. A film crew from the local TV station had come by.

"The wind picked up a 10-foot carousel off the ground and almost took the cameraman with it," says Mr. Jones. "Sometimes you have a hard time holding onto them when they haven't been staked down yet."

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