Local creation ends up in White House...and a hundred thousand other homes
MANISTEE COUNTY, Mich., (WPBN/WGTU) -- If you ask Floyd Bowling if he makes Christmas tree stands at his Bear Lake workshop, he'll say no. Then quickly correct himself in saying that he makes the *best* Christmas tree stands. It's not arrogance, because according to tens of thousands of satisfied customers, he is right.
Floyd and his father built there first tree stand back in 1989. "We were just sitting in our shop. We had raw material in the shop and we just got started putting it together what we thought would be a good nice designed Christmas tree stand," remembers Floyd. They couldn't have known at that time what the next 28 years would hold for them or their creation.
Their design addressed a couple of the basic flaws they saw in other stands that dominated the market. They chose to replace the cheap plastic with heavy gauge steel, solid welds took the place of undersized screws, and tiny, tipsy legs were gone, and in their place larger solid ones. The end result was a Christmas tree stand that keeps your Christmas tree standing upright. Floyd says "it looks like a lunar lander, 3 legs that are stable on any floor. When you pick them up, you just know you aren't going to have any issues with your Christmas tree falling over."
Floyd called his creation and his company Bowling's Last Stand, as he says it's the last stand anyone will need to buy. While they aren't the cheapest stand on the market, he says, "they are an investment for the rest of your life, this Christmas tree stand is going to last. You can hand it down, put it in your will, we hear that all the time."
Floyd and his small team of workers have built more than 100,000 of the stands. A dozen of which were bought by Laura Bush for the White House, one that went to Michael Jordan's home for a massive tree, and more recently, a bunch shipped to Iraq so that soldiers there could celebrate the holiday. They come in 5 sizes but only in one color. Floyd says "the red is symbolic for our salvation, blood that was shed, so it's always going to be red."
In the past 28 years, Floyd Bowling made a lot of things in his Manistee County workshop, memories with his dad, a financial future for his family, and a tree stand that stays standing. While he is extremely humble about his work and what's he been able to do out of his workshop, he is supremely confident in the stands he builds and their ability to keep trees from falling over, ornaments from being broken, and holidays from being ruined.
To learn more about Bowling's Last Stand, click here.
