Tradition Company has been working holiday magic for 20 years
During the holidays, it can be easy to take the twinkling lights and seasonal displays around Buckhead for granted. But quietly behind the scenes, one company is working to make the neighborhood more festive.
Atlanta native Matt Bowman never consciously decided to get into the holiday business. After playing baseball at Colgate University, he took a year off from school. That winter, he sold Christmas trees. “I didn’t really take it seriously, I just knew I could hustle up some dough every winter doing it,” he says. He described his life as a seasonal one at that point, bouncing between selling Christmas trees, finding work in ski towns, and working as an instructor and staff trainer at a friend’s camp. “I kind of got the entrepreneurial bug,” he says, after testing out industries and jobs.
After founding a sports marketing company with a fellow The Lovett School alum, Bowman focused on building a tree company. He had no formal business school training. “I did it all the old-fashioned way, reading marketing and accounting books,” he says. In 2006, Tradition Company opened its first tree lot in Little Five Points. The next year, he opened a second location in Chastain Square, where he still operates today. This year, he’s got four locations: Little Five Points, Chastain Square, Chamblee, the largest lot with the tallest trees, and a new one at 102 West Paces Ferry Road.
Bowman says that the focus has always been on service, no matter what his customers request. “From the beginning, we delivered, did installations, and removed and recycled trees for folks,” he says. “So many people love real trees, but don’t like setting them up and taking them down. We make it really easy.”
While there are other tree businesses in town, Bowman really focuses on his trees being as fresh as possible. “We lease from small farms that allow us to cut our trees on our schedule,” he says. “Some big box stores have to cut their trees in October just because they have so many.” Tradition trees are shipped to Atlanta from three farms in Western North Carolina within 36 hours of being cut.
Bowman is humble, despite running a large operation that sprints through the fourth quarter of the year: there are pumpkins and fall porch displays in October as precursors to the holiday decor bonanza. Tradition Company employs 35 people, some of whom have been with the company for years. “Buying a Christmas tree is such an emotional experience, and it becomes a point of connection,” he says. “We have people who come in and love seeing our staff, and ask after them. We also have people who have never set foot on a lot, and we’ve been bringing them trees for 20 years, and they love our staff, too,” he laughs.
The possibilities are endless. “We have one guy on Peachtree Battle where we do about 700 linear feet of gutter line, big wreaths, and garland over the door,” he says. There have been crazy firewood orders for eight face cords at a time, 11th-hour phone calls for dead competitor trees with 200 guests on the way, 16-foot tree requests from interior designers, and, of course, requests for decor from Atlanta’s bold-faced names.
Bowman has gotten plum commercial accounts along the way, including Buckhead Village District and Ponce City Market. The partnership with Buckhead Village District led to one with Livable Buckhead that sees Bowman setting up decor all over the neighborhood, including the towering live tree and giant menorah every year in Loudermilk Park.
You can check out this year’s 23-foot tree in person on December 6th at the tree lighting ceremony. Before the ceremony, head to Buckhead Village District, where you can volunteer to decorate Tradition Company wreaths that police officers and first responders will pick up to bring back to their stations.
