The Holidays are Big Business for Lux-Art Silks
Christmas orders are placed in January. It takes 12 employees two weeks to decorate the showrooms.
Every November and December, Lux-Art Silks’ 50,000-square-foot showroom off U.S. 301 north of University Parkway is transformed into a Christmas wonderland with festive trees, decorations and holiday collectibles. The holiday season makes up 70 percent of the company’s annual retail sales, but that’s not Lux-Art’s core business. For 50 years, the Sarasota-based company has been designing, manufacturing and supplying lifelike flowers, plants, trees and accessories to the designer trade across the country and world. Lux-Art president Scott B. Brann purchased the business from his mother when she retired in 1996 and has grown the business to more than $5 million in annual revenues. “It’s a designers’ resource for the most botanically correct lifelike permanent botanicals,” he says.
Lux-Art employs 23 people, including 10 full-time designers. Twenty-five national sales reps sell the products around the country.
Lux-Art’s Sarasota headquarters includes a manufacturing facility, showroom and warehouse. It also has trade showrooms in High Point, North Carolina, and Dallas.
Lux-Art’s permanent botanicals are sold in 50 states and several countries, with major national homebuilders and furniture stories as the largest customers. The fastest-growing territory is the Dallas market.
Most of the 3,000 designs of silk polyester-blend botanicals are handmade and hand-painted in China, Cambodia, Vietnam and Thailand factories. Lux-Art is a direct importer, and Scott Brann visits each factory annually. All products are designed and assembled in the Sarasota headquarters.
