Crab Pot Trees put sparkle in down east business' bank account
By Mark Hibbs
NEWS-TIMES
A patent recently granted to inventor Neal “Nicky” Harvey of Davis and some recent media exposure have cast his company, Harvey and Sons Net and Twine, into a new realm. The company’s fold-up lighted crab trap mesh trees have become hot sellers.
As manufacturers of the Core Sound Lighted Christmas Tree, better known around here as Crab Pot Trees, the company is now struggling to keep up with demand. An article in Our State Magazine that has yet to hit newsstands and other coverage have generated calls and orders the company is trying to fill. The staff barely had a chance to enjoy a Thanksgiving meal.
“We were here ’til dinnertime yesterday,” Mr. Harvey said Friday.
The trees come in two-, three-, four- and six-foot sizes. The company has produced special order designs, too, including Halloween trees and one with pink lights and ribbons for use as a baby girl’s birth announcement.
The company’s Web site, www.harveyandsons.com, includes product photos, descriptions and dealer and ordering information.
The trees will also be on sale during the Core Sound
Waterfowl Weekend next week and at the Pamlico Arts and Crafts Fair at
the Jaycee Fairgrounds in
Mr. Harvey’s patent for the design he created from scrap materials normally used to assemble crab pots was approved Aug. 10.
A plaque on the wall in his office in the front room of an old house on Highway 70 bears the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office seal, a mechanical drawing and the invention’s legal description:
An artificial tree having a display position and
a folded position, said tree being comprised of (a) a plurality of
panels, each having a lower edge, a vertical inner edge and an outer
edge, said panels being hingedly attached at their vertical edges…and
a plurality of intermediate panels…and (b) a string of decorative
lights attached to the panels.
Mr. Harvey’s longtime employee Sue Willis said the product is a lot simpler than its description.
“It’s weird. We put it together and don’t even think about it,” she said.
The company’s turnaround is plain to see, however. Mr. Harvey said the invention saved the business.
“The past three years have been terrible for us in the crab pot business. We haven’t made a crab pot in two or three months,” he said.
He said crab pot orders for January were only about 10 percent of those normally received by this time. But the production schedule for trees has gotten longer each year.
“We started in October making trees last year and it wasn’t fast enough. We started in September making trees this year and it wasn’t fast enough,” Mr. Harvey said.
Mr. Harvey said he would keep taking orders and making trees right up until Christmas.
The company has 16 lighted tree dealers scattered
from
Ms. Willis said skeptical new dealers are always surprised at how quickly their trial orders sell out.
“Then they want more and they want them yesterday,” she said.
Mr. Harvey was himself surprised at the stir his little wire trees have caused.
The Our State article, written by Bill Morris with color images by local photographer Scott Taylor, appears in the December issue, which went out to the magazine’s subscribers last week, has prompted calls from all over the state and beyond. The trees and the staff have nearly reached celebrity status.
A reader in
“She said, ‘Oh my Gosh, you mean I’m talking with the lady in the picture in the magazine?’ ” Ms. Willis said.
An earlier story in the commercial fishing trade publication Tradewinds also created a noticeable response.
Not all the phone calls are interested customers, though. Mr. Harvey has also had to put a slew of business offers on the back burner. He said the moment his patent was approved the phone started ringing with product licensing agreement offers.
“I put all that mess on hold. All they want is money,” Mr. Harvey said.
For now, the inventor is too busy answering the phone and delivering products in his new enclosed tree trailer.