C.B. Forck says it’s hard to estimate the extent of the Christmas decorating he does every year as the holiday season approaches.
“We probably hang enough lights every year to stretch 50 miles at least,” he said as he climbed the ladder to the roof of a Cape Girardeau home. “And tens of thousands of lights for sure. Maybe more.”
Now in its 20th year, Forck’s Lite Designs & Guttering of Benton, Missouri, is responsible for outdoor holiday lighting for more than 100 homes and businesses throughout the Cape Girardeau and Jackson area as well as several surrounding counties in Southeast Missouri.
“We start hanging lights in the middle of October and try to have everything up by the first week of December,” Forck said. For several months, he and his eight-man crew (including two of his sons) work almost every day, often regardless of weather, decorating home and business exteriors … as well as trees, shrubs, light poles and virtually anything else from which they can hang lights, wreaths and garland.
They spent the past few days stringing miles of lights through Jackson City Park and this week they’ll focus on Old Town Cape’s new 30-foot tree at the intersection of Broadway and Fountain Street, across from The Courtyard by Marriott.
“Jackson’s park lighting ceremony is at the same time as the Christmas tree in Cape,” Forck said. Both are scheduled for Friday evening.
“We’ve been doing the Jackson Park for a few years and that is a major ‘keep your fingers crossed’ project when we turn it on,” Forck laughed. “We had issues our first year there four years ago because it was raining. And I’m not talking about a little bit of rain. The ground was flooded, Hubble Creek was out of its banks and electricity, GFI outlets and water don’t mix!”
Forck’s holiday lights business evolved out of the landscape work he was doing in the 1990s. “We had a few residential customers ask us about doing exterior Christmas lighting and that’s how we got started,” he said. “Since then, we no longer do the lawn care and landscaping. These days, we do construction work — guttering, siding, soffits and fascia — the rest of the year.”
The Christmas lighting business has grown every year, he said, mostly thanks to word of mouth. “That’s our No. 1 form of advertising, so to speak,” he said. “That and our trucks. People see us driving around and see us at customers’ homes and businesses and decide they want to hire us to do their homes and businesses, too.”
Forck says many of his clients hired him because they don’t have the time, inclination or expertise to do the work themselves. “A lot of homeowners don’t have the ladders and that sort of thing we have,” he said.
Receive Daily Headlines FREESign up today!
One thing Forck and his employees don’t appear to have is a fear of heights as they seem very at ease working on rooftops two and three stories above the ground.
About 60% of Forck’s customers are residential clients while the rest are businesses such as banks and office buildings. One of his biggest clients is Cape Girardeau’s downtown business district where the seasonal lights have recently been converted from incandescent lights to LED (light-emitting diode) bulbs.
“Virtually everything we do now is commercial grade LED lighting that’s custom cut to fit your house,” Forck noted. “There are advantages to LED lights. They use less power, they’re more reliable and a lot of the same bulbs are still going after 10 years. You’re never going to find that with incandescent lights.”
It takes about three or four hours to light the average home, “but some we’ll be at all day,” he said. It all depends on what the customer wants and the size of the installation.
The work doesn’t stop once the lights are hung. “We do a complete weekly drive through of all of our properties after dark to verify that everything is burning like it’s supposed to be and replacing a bulb here and a bulb there, even if a customer hasn’t called,” Forck said. “Of course, if a customer calls, we respond within 24 hours. We’ve even done repairs between Christmas and New Year’s because customers want everything lit for New Year’s parties and things of that sort.”
And, of course, what goes up must come down.
“We’ll start taking everything down starting the first week of January and, weather permitting, we’ll have everything down and stored by the middle of February,” Forck said. “We store about 90% of everything we hang in a 7,000-square-foot warehouse in Benton.”
The warehouse is adjacent to Lite Designs & Guttering’s shop and offices where Forck’s wife, Pam, handles the company’s billing, scheduling and other administrative responsibilities.
Does Forck think of himself as an “artist” when it comes to Christmas lighting? “Yeah, I’ve had people for years who say they can tell the homes we do because all the lights are in straight lines, every bulb is clipped and there’s not stuff hanging everywhere,” he said. “It’s nice to sit back and look at ’em once they’re lit.”
Do you crave business news? Check out B Magazine, and the B Magazine email newsletter. Check it out at www.semissourian.com/newsletters to find out more.
Story Tags
Advertisement
Related
Connect with the Southeast Missourian Newsroom:
For corrections to this story or other insights for the editor, click here. To submit a letter to the editor, click here. To learn about the Southeast Missourian’s AI Policy, click here.
Related
Advertisement
Receive Daily Headlines FREESign up today!
