Holiday and event decorating and lighting installation company Christmas Decor has about 200 franchisees servicing 240 territories across United States and Canada. The holiday and event decorating and light installation company is franchised by The Decor Group which was recently acquired by Tucker’s Fsrm Corporation.
With Christmas just weeks away, Tucker’s Farm Corporation and its franchise platform arm Wonder Franchise began celebrating the holidays with a seasonally appropriate acquisition.
Bermuda-based Tucker’s Farm acquired holiday and event decorating and light installation company The Decor Group which owns Christmas Decor. Financial terms of the deal were undisclosed.
Adam Lewin is the CEO of Wonder Franchise, the franchise platform arm of Tucker’s Farm Corporation.
“Christmas Decor is a great company that is really well run. The focus now for us is to scale and grow it, which we’re confident we can do,” said Adam Lewin, the CEO of Wonder Franchise.
Founded in 1996 by Blake Smith, Irving, Texas-based Christmas Decor has about 200 franchisees servicing 240 territories across United States and Canada. Decor Group owns non-franchised product and service brands NiteTime Decor—which sells landscape lighting products to contractors, including Christmas Decor operators—and Barcana, which designs and manufactures artificial trees, illuminated and fiberglass figures and ornaments. The company also owns PermaLites365, a permanent roofline lighting product and service brand.
Decor Group services over 30,000 properties each year across all four of its brands, according to the company.
No. 364 on the Franchise Times Top 400 list, Christmas Decor generated $77.7 million in sales in 2023. Average unit volumes for the largely seasonal business were just under $400,000 with the top-performing units reporting nearly $6 million in gross revenue, according to its recent franchise disclosure document.
The investment range for a Christmas Decor is $23,550 to $110,250. Average tickets for Christmas Decor range from $1,819 to $2,253, said Lewin, with the retention rate for its customers coming in at 80 percent.
Lewin said the leadership of Decor Group and Christmas Decor will stay the same. Smith will remain the CEO of the product company with Brandon Stephen, will remain in charge of the franchise company.
Blake Smith founded Texas-based Christmas Decor in 1996.
“We anticipate that this arrangement will accelerate the growth and overall health of the business, and expand our franchisees’ reach to even more markets,” said Smith in a statement.
Tucker’s Farm and its founder James Tucker are not new to franchising. It sold its minority stake in medical spa franchisor VIO Med Spa in October to private equity firm Freeman Spogli.
Tucker founded Tucker’s Farm in 1994 in Bermuda as a small goat dairy before his son, Kyle Tucker, took over the business and transitioned it into a long-duration holding vehicle. The company aims to deploy $60 million of equity capital every year as it seeks to find and compound cash flow through highly active M&A strategies in the lower-middle market.
Kyle Tucker was been involved in large franchise transactions prior to Tucker’s Farm including with European Wax Center as a franchisee and as a franchisor with Lee’s Famous Recipe Chicken as part of an investment group which owned the franchise at one time. Today, he’s a passive minority shareholder in Lee’s Famous.
Lewin believes there’s lots of opportunity to expand Christmas Decor, mainly through growing its commercial business and by existing franchisees expanding their operations beyond the holiday season.
“Right now, most of the franchisees run primarily seasonal businesses with Christmas Decor. The landscape lighting and non-holiday lighting part can be a nice supplemental business for them as well,” Lewin said. “So, the question for us is how do we make this more of a year-round business for the franchisees and grow their businesses.”
Lewin said Wonder Franchise, which was launched by Tucker’s Farm in 2023, is already eyeing its next acquisition. He said the company is in late-stage talks with a quick-service restaurant brand that has around 100 units with more than $90 million in system sales and is anticipating making that announcement soon.
Boxwood Partners served as financial advisor and Lathrop GPM acted as legal counsel to Wonder Franchises and Tucker’s Farm in the acquisition of the Decor Group and Christmas Decor. Michael Goss, executive managing director of mergers & acquisitions at Generational Equity, served as financial advisor and Stephenson Fournier acted as legal counsel to Christmas Decor.