Centennial suitcases with vintage Christmas decorations are a treasure for kids and adults alike. A shaped Christmas toy, passed down from generation to generation, creates a special magic on New Year's Eve.
Factories that produce exclusive toys about a century ago are still working. Glassblowers and artists recreate glass Christmas decorations by hand from sketches. The unique value of each shaped Christmas tree toy in a unique silhouette and individual painting.
On the site in this section, a selection of New Year's glass toys from two manufacturers is provided.
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Individually packaged shaped Christmas decorations will become an original souvenir for a person who is not indifferent to things with a touch of antiquity. Tiny, neat Christmas decorations are perfect for decorating a vintage-style Christmas tree.
Of all the ideas to make money on holiday products, the most interesting are Christmas decorations. Production of Christmas toys as a business: is it profitable, features of this business activity, manufacturing technology.
Christmas decorations are hung not only on the main symbol of the New Year, but also decorate houses, shop windows, offices, streets, retail and industrial premises. Although the purchase of holiday goods begins at the beginning of winter, production does not stop throughout the year.
Market Review
The custom of decorating a Christmas tree for Christmas originated in the 17th century in Europe. Decorations then were Christian religious symbols - stars, apples, candles. A variety of toys, sweets and gingerbread began to appear later.
The production of glass balls began in the 19th century in the town of Lauscha, in what is now Germany, and remains the oldest in the world. According to legend, it was a replacement for traditional apples in a lean year.
In Russia, the manufacture of Christmas tree decorations underwent 2 serious crises:
- In 1929, when the celebration of Christmas was canceled at the state level. After 6 years, the tradition returned as a non-religious New Year.
- In 2000 during the economic recession. Then the market was filled with cheap Chinese goods, of the same type and mostly made of plastic.
10-20 companies are engaged in the mass production of Christmas decorations in Russia, supplying products both to the domestic market and abroad. The largest are:
- Yolochka, located in the city of Vysokovsk, Moscow Region, which is the successor to the glass-blowing company of the early 18th century.
- "Ariel" in Nizhny Novgorod, which produces original and high-quality toys.
- Karachev Christmas Tree Decorations Factory, which has been in existence for over 80 years and supplies decorations for the Kremlin.
- "Biryusinka", Krasnoyarsk with a wide range of New Year's goods.
Although the Russian market is still dominated by Chinese Christmas decorations, consumers are showing increased interest in handmade ornaments of original design by domestic manufacturers.
Business plan
Entrepreneurs interested in the idea of making Christmas decorations, first of all, need to draw up a step-by-step instruction for launching a project:
- Studying the specifics of the industry.
- Sales organization.
- Study of production technology.
- Room rental.
- Business registration.
- Purchase of equipment and materials.
- Hiring staff.
- Economic calculations.
Peculiarities
When starting a business on Christmas tree decorations, you need to take into account the specifics of this industry:
- Production and sale are not interconnected. Production is carried out all year round, and the period of active sales falls on the last 2-3 months.
- The minimum payback period for initial investments is six months.
- To cover current monthly expenses, side types of income are used - organizing master classes, conducting excursions to production facilities, opening exhibition halls.
- The technology of execution of the most demanded glass toys is long and laborious. At almost all stages, manual work is used, requiring high qualifications.
- There are few specialist glassblowers, and there are serious problems in the selection of personnel.
- It is impossible to use most advertising methods, since Christmas tree decorations do not belong to the goods of constant demand.
Particular attention is paid to pricing, as it will have to compete with affordable Chinese-made products.
Sales
To organize a profitable business, sales channels for specific New Year's products are needed. This must be done at the very first stage of the project implementation, in order to be sure that the investment in production will pay off.
Large retail chains begin wholesale purchases of holiday accessories in late summer - early autumn. Small traders update their assortment closer to the start of New Year's sales. This means that it is necessary to start making toys in early spring.
Technology
Original and beautiful Christmas decorations are made by hand with a minimum set of equipment. The main stages of production:
- Mold blowing - for this, glass tubes are taken and heated with a small gas burner to 1000-1500 ° C. A ball is blown out of the softened mold - like a soap bubble. If the conditions are met - temperature regime, rotation speed, force and moment of the beginning of air injection - then a transparent thin-walled sphere will be obtained. To create complex products, pliers are used. The main difficulty is that if the glass cools too quickly, it will burst. Therefore, experienced professionals work quickly and with high accuracy.
- Cooling - the blanks are placed in a furnace to gradually reduce the temperature and equalize the internal pressure.
- Metal coating - if the toy is not transparent, then the semi-finished product is painted from the inside. To do this, reagents are poured into the balls and placed in hot water. As a result, the product is covered on the inside with a thin layer of silver.
- Primary coloring - the future Christmas tree ball is continuously twisted to remove air, then nitro-varnishes and nitro-enamels lie evenly and smoothly. Then the products are dried in an oven with sand or sawdust and cleaned of debris. If you want to additionally color the toy, then proceed to the next step.
- Drawing a picture - artists create fabulous Christmas balls, and in serial production the same motif is copied almost one to one. For this, a sample is made, which the employee will be guided by. The blanks are hung on the frame, and one layer of the composition is applied to all the balls in turn. When the last toy is finished, the drawing continues on the dried part.
- Fastening - after the product acquires the desired look, the narrow top is cut off and a holder with an eyelet is inserted for hanging on the Christmas tree.
- Packaging is an important step in production as fragile toys break easily. Ideally, you need to place each ball or figure in a separate special box with a fixation of position. However, this increases the cost, so the factories often pack toys in cardboard boxes with a soft pad in several pieces.
According to this technology, a worker produces 200-250 blank balls or 5-50 fully finished products per day. Branding of toys is carried out using pad printing.
The manufacture of other jewelry is simpler and does not require the involvement of specialists with a rare glass blowing profession. A small business can buy ready-made transparent balloons from a factory, paint and decorate them.
room
For a large project for the production of Christmas decorations, a place of 150-200 square meters is needed. m. for production departments, warehouse and administration. Since glassblowers work at high temperatures, and paints and enamels emit harmful substances, a powerful exhaust system is needed.
If the enterprise will not be engaged in glass blowing, then 50-100 sq. m. For the showroom or sales department will need to allocate 15-25 square meters. m.
registration
At this stage, the official registration of the enterprise in state bodies takes place. For a limited liability company, it is necessary to come up with a name that would reflect the specifics of the activity and not coincide with existing companies.
A businessman who decides to register as an individual entrepreneur needs to remember that the wholesale sale of Christmas toys to legal entities will be problematic. Certain tax restrictions are imposed on transactions between individual entrepreneurs and legal entities.
The release of Christmas decorations is not licensed, however, it is required to obtain a permit for production and pass certification of products for export deliveries and sales to large retail outlets.
Equipment and materials
In the glass blowing shop you need to purchase (for 1 workplace):
- gas burner;
- stove;
- Workbench;
- system for metallization;
- pad printing machine, if logos are applied.
For painting the balls, iron containers are needed, and for trimming the tails, a machine with a diamond wheel is needed. The graphic designer needs a table, a frame for hanging blanks, different-sized brushes, cuvettes for glitter and flock.
Main production materials:
- Glass flasks.
- Paints.
- Sequins.
- Glue.
- Mounts.
- Package.
The exhibition and trading premises are equipped with racks, showcases, and a cash desk.
Staff
The success of the entire enterprise depends on the qualifications of workers in the production of Christmas tree decorations. It is difficult to find competent experienced specialists - this is not a very common industry. The number of employees depends on the planned production volumes.
The staff is hiring:
- glass blower;
- artist;
- auxiliary worker;
- accountant;
- manager;
- cleaner.
To save money, the manager is responsible for the purchase of materials and the sale of finished products.
Video: Christmas toys.
Financial calculations
To answer the question of whether it is profitable to do business in the production of Christmas toys, you need to make a calculation of investments, regular costs and planned income.
To launch an enterprise with its own glass-blowing shop far from the regional center, with 6 employees, the following amount will be required (based on 6 months):
If all the products dedicated to the New Year are sold, the factory will receive income:
| № | Name of income | Quantity, pcs | Average price, rub./piece | Amount, rub. |
| 1 | Balls with a diameter of 5-9 cm (simple version) | 2500 | 65 | 162 500 |
| 2 | Balls with a diameter of 10-12 cm (simple version) | 2500 | 350 | 875 000 |
| 3 | Complex design balloons | 500 | 700 | 350 000 |
| 4 | figurines | 500 | 250 | 125 000 |
| 5 | Ball sets | 300 | 480 | 144 000 |
| 6 | Assorted sets | 300 | 850 | 255 000 |
| 7 | Balloons with logo | 3000 | 150 | 450 000 |
| Total | 2 361 500 | |||
The Christmas tree decoration business in Russia is forced to compete with mass-produced Chinese products. Due to an individual approach to customers and the original design of toys, it is possible to organize a profitable business.
The Christmas goods market has certain specifics. The production of Christmas decorations does not require expensive and technically sophisticated equipment, but it is impossible without qualified personnel.
It is often quite problematic to find specialists in their field, which creates additional difficulties. Nevertheless, despite the factors that scare off investors, the profitability of such a business is quite high. How are Christmas decorations made? What will be the cost of this activity? How to competently organize a business and occupy an empty niche in the market? Read about it in the article.
Seasonal or non-seasonal business?
People buy New Year's paraphernalia just before the holidays, so the start of sales of Christmas tree decorations should fall in September, not earlier. It turns out that this business is seasonal? Not certainly in that way. Yes, indeed, you will receive the main share of the profit in the last three or four months of the year, however, the production of glass balls and other Christmas tree decorations is carried out all year without interruption. Throughout the twelve months, the craftsmen work, trying to produce as many toys as possible. And at the end of the year, the products are sold out like hot cakes, which provides you with a good profit.
But one nuance must be taken into account. During the working period, you will have to pay rent and utility bills, pay salaries to employees, purchase raw materials and materials at your own expense, that is, you need a fairly large start-up capital. But at the end of the year, all investments will return with a vengeance.
On the issue of competition
Many entrepreneurs are afraid to engage in such a business, because they believe that there is huge competition in it. Actually this is a delusion. Yes, all the shops and street outlets are littered with Christmas tree decorations before the New Year, so it seems that there is simply no place for beginners there.
In reality, there are only a few dozen domestic manufacturers of these products, and there are approximately the same number of wholesalers selling goods. At the same time, the main share of the company's products is exported abroad (for some, up to 90 percent of the products are exported).
Where, then, is there such a variety of New Year's toys on the shelves of stores? The fact is that we import most of the Christmas tree decorations from China. One large domestic factory can produce no more than three hundred to five hundred thousand units of products per year. In general, fifteen to twenty million toys from Russian manufacturers enter the market every year, which is less than 40 percent of the market.
All other items are shipped from China. The production of Christmas tree decorations in this country is on stream, but most products are made of plastic, respectively, they are not of good quality. But such toys are also cheaper than glass ones.
Assessment of prospects
Competing with Chinese products because of their cheapness is quite difficult, but possible. Russian New Year's decorations have a high subtlety of execution, excellent quality, are distinguished by their uniqueness and variety of design. Now domestic manufacturers are actively introducing new technologies, automating some stages of production, which makes it possible to update the assortment more often in accordance with the fashion trends of New Year's decor.
Such innovations are perceived by consumers very positively - people are tired of low-quality stamped products and want to see classic vintage toys and glass balls familiar from childhood on the Christmas tree. Therefore, although the market for Christmas decorations is still dominated by imported goods, there is significant potential for the expansion and development of domestic production.
Making Christmas toys
As already mentioned, the creation of such products does not require significant technical equipment. After all, almost the entire process is done manually. Equipment costs will amount to about fifty to one hundred thousand rubles, the same amount will need to be spent on materials and raw materials. Pay special attention to the condition of the room: it must have good ventilation, because most of the work involves the use of high temperatures. Step by step we will tell you about how the production of Christmas tree decorations is carried out.
Purging
First, glassblowers use a gas burner to blow balls out of glass tubes. Such work requires skill and extreme accuracy. Experienced craftsmen use the minimum amount of materials and fixtures and select the right size of the glass tube, the optimal fire mode by eye, determine the moment of air blowing and the uniformity of rotation. And the permissible error (just imagine!) Is only 0.2 millimeters.
How to make a toy-figure from an inflatable ball? For this, special molds are used. It is necessary that the ball has very thin glass walls, and this is quite difficult to achieve, because the glass cools quickly, as a result of which tension is created inside the product.
The production of Christmas decorations is impossible without the involvement of qualified and experienced glassblowers, so search for suitable specialists in advance. Since the work is almost completely manual, the productivity will not be high - one master can give out only 200-250 balls per day. The number of glassblowers you need to hire will depend on how much product you want to produce. In the regions, the salary of such specialists starts from fifteen thousand rubles.
Metallization
Cooled glass blanks are placed in containers with reagents, where they are (to give a shine) covered with a thin layer of metal (aluminum or silver). A special compound (for example, ammonia, silver oxide and distilled water) is injected inside the products, after which they are placed in hot water baths, under the influence of which a reaction occurs, and silver is deposited on the walls.
Painting and drying
The production of Christmas decorations continues in the painting shop, where they arrive after plating. Here, the primary background painting of the balls is carried out. This should be done with constant rotation of the products so that air does not penetrate under the paint layer. Otherwise, bubbles will appear and the coating will be damaged. Toys are painted with nitro enamels, nitro varnishes and other materials.
When varnishing and selecting colors, the method of creative variation is used, as a result, each product is unique and inimitable. It is possible to varnish Christmas balls in containers with paints and varnishes or in booths with an exhaust hood. But in this case, the process is also done manually - the toys are gradually immersed in the paint, while rotating so that the air does not remain under the film.
After varnishing, the products are installed vertically to avoid leakage into the trays of the drying chamber filled with sawdust and sand. Then, with the help of a rag, the remnants of sawdust and sand are removed from the varnishing decorative layer, and the glass toys are sent to the artists for final design.
Painting
This stage, like the previous ones, involves the use of manual labor. Decorators know exactly how to make decorations from balls of extraordinary beauty. A pattern is applied to the product, if necessary, covered with sparkles. Painting toys is an even more laborious process than blowing balloons, so the speed of artists' work is lower than that of glassblowers. One master produces 50-100 products per day.
After the drawing is applied, the tip is cut off from the decoration and a cap with a loop is put on this place. Everything, the toy is ready!
Package
Pay special attention to what the products will be packed in. Often, manufacturers outsource the production of cardboard decorative boxes to contractors. But wholesalers often complain that not a single batch reaches retailers intact, because many toys break during transportation. Of course, this will negatively affect your reputation, so develop safe packaging, even if it slightly increases the cost of products.
Nuances
As already mentioned, you will have to cover the costs for the production of Christmas balls and glass figurines from your own pocket or through a loan, since wholesale sales do not begin until September. Many companies use borrowed funds and then repay the loans as the product is sold. Of course, this entails certain risks. In addition, the prices of Christmas decorations cannot be significantly overestimated, otherwise your products will not be able to compete with cheap Chinese products.
However, there are opportunities to increase income. So, some businessmen try to work for export, others organize paid tours of the factory for everyone, during which you can watch the process of making toys and even try to create a glass masterpiece on your own. Dare - and everything will work out! Good luck!
The Village visited the Nizhny Novgorod factory of glass Christmas decorations "Ariel" and learned how elegant New Year figurines are born.
Photos
Ilya Bolshakov
It is hard to imagine, but from 1927 to 1935 in the Soviet Union neither New Year nor Christmas was celebrated - they were seen as an ideological threat. But then the tradition revived and began to develop with renewed vigor, albeit with a taste of propaganda. The Ariel factory, founded in 1996, is one of only two year-round production facilities in the country. She is also the assignee of the glass-blowing art workshop of the Gorky artel "Children's Toy", opened in 1936. After the holiday was returned to the people, standards for making toys began to appear, and methodological manuals for teachers on how to properly decorate a Christmas tree with children, because each era had its own symbolism, designed to strengthen the spirit of citizens, faith in leaders and further down the list. If we recall retrofigures, it is easy to guess during whose reign, for example, corn and onions were hung on Christmas trees. All forms were developed and approved centrally, and finished samples were sent for production. Today, everything is dictated mainly by fashion, and the factories themselves decide what and how they will do.
Idea development
Creativity at this stage can refer to both the shape of the toy and the pattern on it. A specially created creative group of artists is developing several options for a new piece of jewelry, inspired by fashion trends, traditional symbols of the year, and retro motifs. Further, the chief artist approves those samples that will go into production. If this is a ball with a new pattern, then the approved version becomes the standard from which the masters will copy everything. If the figurine is new, then glass blowers are sent a ceramic mold for making.
Glass work
As a raw material, the factory buys glass darts - hollow tubes one and a half meters high. All it takes to turn this dart into beautiful figures is a 650-degree gas burner and the skill of a glass blower. The flame quickly heats up the tube, the glass becomes plastic, which allows you to separate a small piece from it for further work - “pull out the bullet”. You can make any toy out of it, but first you need to heat its main part again.
When the master understands that the glass has melted sufficiently (and this can only be understood through experience and intuition, because it will not work to touch it with your hands or measure the temperature), he removes the bullet from the fire and begins to blow air into it through one of the "whiskers" - long ends of the workpiece. The air from the inside pushes the walls and, constantly turning the bullet in his hands, the glass blower blows out the ball, and then heats up the mustache, twists it and tears it off. All handmade balls are not perfectly even, but it is almost impossible to notice this.
If it is necessary to make a figurine from the workpiece, for example, a snowman, it is also heated, but placed in a ceramic mold before blowing. Air is then also blown in through the mustache, but the glass expands exactly as long as the walls of the mold allow.
okolpachka
After blowing, the toys are sent to the paint shop, where they are given color: pink gloss, matte chocolate. For the remaining mustache, they are dipped into a barrel of varnish and placed on a stand until dry. Then this mustache is cut off and a cap is put on, the same one into which a thread is threaded to hang a toy on a Christmas tree. For some toys, these stages become final, they are packed and sent to customers.
painting
This is the longest and most laborious process, because the artist literally draws a picture on every blank. But this is what makes the factory so remarkable, and toys - in demand. Over the years of work, it has developed its own, recognizable school of painting, detailed and realistic. And orders come not only from other regions, but also from Europe and the USA. For comparison, there are only four glassblowers in the state, and sixty artists.
On the table, each of them has a rack where toys, acrylic paints, brushes and water, a palette, napkins and the sample itself are hung. Since the painting takes place step by step, one master has several products at the same time, and it is difficult to calculate how many times a day each of them is picked up and hung back. First, underpainting is applied - the main color spots, then the details, from large to small. If you need to draw a house, then first the first wall is drawn on all the balls, followed by the second. This helps to save paint and time of the master.
Since the main audience is still children, four thematic workshops for independent painting were created for them: confectionery, sea, space and fantasy. Each child brings home from an excursion a toy decorated with his own pattern, although far from perfect, but no less valuable. Next to the workshops there is a museum with many works produced throughout the history of the existence of a glass Christmas tree toy, and photo zones, conditionally divided into eras and styles. Here you can see both a traditional retro Christmas tree with toys on clothespins, pioneers and corn, as well as very conceptual metal pyramid frames decorated with black glossy balls. But what is most surprising of all, this working atmosphere with a year-round holiday does not in the least discourage the factory workers from decorating Christmas trees at home. The only thing that has changed with their arrival here is that the approach to choosing jewelry has become more conscious and thoughtful.
Unfortunately, now on the Christmas tree decorations market there is a solid Chinese plastic stamping. But in Russia there are excellent factories of real glass Christmas decorations! Yes, a different price category, but such beauty is worth it...
Handmade Christmas decorations factories operate in Sokolniki, Karachev, Bryansk region, Krasnoyarsk, Selizharovo village, Tver region, village. Danilovo, Pavlovsky Posad district, there are probably others .... It is simply unrealistic to tell about all the factories in one post, so the story of two factories is to represent the process.
Factory of Christmas decorations "Ariel" (Nizhny Novgorod) has been in production for 20 years. Here, all year round - in spring, and summer, and autumn, and winter - they make Christmas balls and funny glass figurines, which then decorate Christmas trees in different countries of the world.
What's the beautiful!
You can make a special order and the balls will be printed with images according to your order. For example, a series commissioned by the metro:
And in the collection of Nizhny Novgorod masters there are balls with the image of Barack Obama. The craftsmen say that in 2009 the administration of the President of the United States made a special order for their production. The agreement was long and not easy: at first, the artists painted an image of Obama with a wide smile on the ball, because they knew that this charming smile was his calling card. But the Americans said that the president in the image was “too cheerful” and asked to portray him more strictly. As a result, the option with a restrained smile was adopted as the basis. And a broadly smiling Obama remained in Nizhny Novgorod as a keepsake!
Only women work in production, the only man they have is the director. He also owns the idea to make rafters under the roof in the form of a Christmas tree:
Here you can also buy their toys.
Every day the factory accepts 16 tour groups! About 300 children of all ages - from elementary school students to school graduates and students of technical schools - come to the factory to get acquainted with the process of creating Christmas decorations.
So the process...
The chief artist of the factory develops sketches and comes up with plots that will then be applied to jewelry.
Here are the long glass blanks that come into production:
The stick is heated and divided into several small pieces.
Warmed up, pulled
Divided:
This workshop occupies one small office and only 4 people work here.
There are 3 times more artists than glassblowers:
Each artist draws a certain plot. All this is done by hand, but the drawings on the balls are almost indistinguishable from each other:
The drawing is applied in several stages: a toy is taken and one layer of paint is applied, while the paint dries on it, the artist applies the main color to the second toy, etc. Then the artist returns to the first one and draws part of the plot and hangs the toy again, and so on.
The production is relatively small. The factory is located in this pretty house:
Factory "Herringbone" (Klin) For more than 50 years he has been making Christmas decorations.
The first workshops for the production of Christmas decorations opened in the Klin district in the middle of the 19th century. This happened after Prince Alexander Menshikov built a small glass factory here in 1848. Local peasants, having worked in production, equipped home workshops, from where the first Russian Christmas decorations made of glass came out.
For a century and a half, the process of making toys has hardly changed. Unless the workers who fanned the fire with the help of leather bellows were replaced by burners running on compressed gas ...
Working with glass requires extreme concentration and experience. The drone (glass blank) is first heated to the desired temperature, and then a ball or figured toy is blown out of it. For the master, the main thing is to catch the right moment when the drone is already plastic enough, but not too soft yet. Missed a second - and nothing will work.
Due to its shape, the Swan is considered one of the most difficult Christmas decorations to manufacture.
There is a lot of noise in the glass blowing shop. Some workers use headphones, but most have long been accustomed to it.
Mostly women work in production - men do not have enough patience for this craft. Usually 17-20 people work in a glass blowing shop. Most came here right after high school.
The next stage of production is metallization. In special vacuum chambers, toys are coated with a thin layer of aluminum, which makes their surface mirror-like.
After metallization, the toys are painted. Of course, also by hand.
The ball is simply dipped into a container of paint, and then left to dry for several hours.
Unlike balls, complex-shaped toys cannot be evenly painted over without the use of a spray gun.
December is the peak season at the enterprise. On the eve of the New Year, Yolochka is working in an enhanced mode.
After painting, the toys are sent to the painting workshop, where drawings are applied to them according to pre-prepared samples.
Based on the Chinese calendar, the company annually produces toys depicting the symbol of the coming year.
In addition to interesting work, many at Yolochka are kept by a good, by local standards, salary.
From time to time corporate orders also come to the enterprise. Usually they ask to depict the company logo or some object related to its activities on the toys.
After painting, the “tails” are sawn off from the toys - they will no longer be useful.
Sawing is one of the few manufacturing processes that is automated.
Some of the toys are stripped of their "tails" by hand. A holder is inserted into the holes formed.
Finished toys are packed in boxes and sent to store shelves, to us.
Handmade Christmas decorations are reminiscent of our toys from childhood. Looking at them, you understand that it was precisely such Christmas toys, or very similar to them, that our parents hung on the Christmas tree. Before them, their parents. Sorting through such Christmas decorations in a cardboard box, you experience inexpressible nostalgia and unity with the past and the future. It cannot be explained in words. You just need to start decorating the Christmas tree with hand-painted toys!
