FRANKENMUTH, Mich.(WZMQ) – With the winter holidays approaching fast, the world’s largest Christmas store is experiencing some of its busiest weeks of the season. Bronner’s Christmas Wonderland, Michigan’s own slice of the North Pole, has been spreading Christmas cheer from Frankenmuth for over 75 years.
The Bronner family business began right in the middle of Frankenmuth in 1945. Starting with just one storefront, Wally Bronner and his family eventually bought up the two neighboring buildings which held the original Tannenbaum Shop and Bavarian Corner.
The family moved south of town to 25 Christmas Lane, where the current store now sits. The massive holiday hub occupies 27 acres and is larger than one and a half football fields.
Wally’s grandson, Dietrich Bronner, is now the store’s catalog and product development manager. He said this time of year, they hire 500 workers, or elves, to help with the holiday rush that reaches almost 30,000 visitors on its busiest winter days.
“My grandfather started the store sign painting in his parent’s basement and it evolved into this huge Christmas wonderland. It takes quite some time to explore.” Bronner said. “Just seeing the customer’s joy and anticipation of coming in here. When the doors open, they flood in and just you see smiles all around, so that’s really fun. it keeps everybody motivated.”
150 of those elves work in the North Building with assistant manager Connie Ruchow, to fulfill and ship holiday orders.
“It’s a Christmas wonderland, it really is. The town of Frankenmuth is like a Christmas town. It’s like a Hallmark movie, we like to say.” Ruchow said. “The hustle and bustle, we work all year for this, so come October, when it picks up, this is our game time.”
The holidays always start early in retail stores all over the U.S., and for places like Bronner’s, Christmas orders are filled year-round, full of holiday goodies.
Behind the scenes, in the workshops of Bronner’s Christmas Wonderland, nearly 2,000 orders are received, packed, and shipped every day.
Rochow said holiday orders start to pick up in October, and it only gets busier as they get closer to Christmas.
She explained that there are two ways for the orders to come in: Through the call center in the catalog department, and Internet orders. She said that this time of year, most orders can be packed and shipped within three days, but personalized items can take an extra four to complete. Once those special items are complete, they are combined with the rest of the order on a tray and are prepared to be packaged.
Rochow said that once December starts, the volume of packages they fulfill means they can’t guarantee personalized items in time for Christmas.
In the Bronner’s workshop, there are over 50,000 different items, and 6,000 different styles of ornaments, half of which are exclusive to Bronner’s.
Rushow said one of the challenges they face this time of year, is having enough people with the handwriting to help personalize and hand pen items.
The fulfillment team said it’s never too early to start ordering for Christmas, you can always shop in person, but online: the earlier you order, the more likely you are to receive your holiday decorations and gifts on time.
The Mackderington family makes the trip to Bronner’s every year. With members traveling from Houghton, Saginaw, and Lansing, they said they always make time for a family trip, even taking time off work to spend the day in Frankenmuth.
Bronner’s plays a huge role in Christmas traditions for families like the Mackdurirngton’s, as well as both local and out-of-state visitors as Michigan’s winter wonderland.
Bronner’s Christmas Wonderland has its fair share of holiday traditions that date back over 70 years. Since 1945, families have been visiting the store to see which new item they’ll take home to add to the tree
The Macderington family is mostly from Flint, Michigan, but some of them travel from Houghton and Lansing every winter for their family trip to Bronner’s.
The extended family took the time off work to visit Frankenmuth and spend the day as a Christmas celebration. They said they call themselves the Macdutingtons because they’re all related, but have different last names and combined them.
Dietrich said that their hand-decorated Christmas cookies, customized stockings, and unique advent calendars are always popular traditions for families who like to visit the Christmas wonderland each year.
“All the standbys, the longstanding traditions, they are some of our best sellers.” Dietrich Bronner said. “People definitely come back here for this nostalgia, the traditions, the things that they can keep looking back on from their childhood. visiting the store over the years and seeing all the new additions.”
Dietrich said that there’s no shortage of special things to see and to do during a visit. Everything from meeting Santa Claus to getting a new Christmas pickle for your tree.
The Macderington’s said that though they don’t hide a pickle in their tree, they do commemorate each trip with a new special ornament to remember their trip.
Once the holidays pass, the Bronner family starts making their plans, and coming up with new designs for the next year. Dietrich said that by next Christmas, they’ll have introduced around 300 more new items for people to check out and bring home to be a part of their family traditions.
“They’ll say, I remember coming back here in the eighties or the seventies and meeting my grandfather Wally,” Dietrich said. “And they’ve come back every other year or every year as much as they can and explore what’s new in the store.”
the elves at Bronner’s Christmas Wonderland work year-round, introducing new items to prepare the store for the fall and winter. They start planning for Christmas a full year ahead in advance.
The holiday rush at Bronner’s extends into January, while people continue to celebrate and purchase their last-minute gifts and decorations, the transition into the new year begins behind the scenes.
“We spend quite a few months preparing our shelves for the season,” Rochow said. “We do inventory in January and so we get to the whole inventory process and then in February, we start cleaning up a little bit you know cleaning up organizing from the season.”
As the back of the workshops makes room, the product design team starts drawing up new items to fill the space. led by Dietrich Bronner, they work to make changes in the store starting in February. Dietrich said the spring and summer are spent working on new product designs and looking at the most popular items to determine what they need to stock the most of, for next winter.
“We have almost 2 to 300 new things per year. that’s almost a new thing every single day that we’re creating in-house designing exclusively here at Bronner’s,” Dietrich said. “It’s really funny to see people get a kick out of aliens on surfboards or Santa having hot chocolate with a snowman or a bigfoot, or whenever, you name it, we pretty much have it here.”
They introduce those new items as they design them, throughout the year, adding to the 500,000 items already in stock. He said that by introducing the new decorations over the summer, they get to hear which ones are the most popular from the store’s year-round customers.
Dietrich said that on top of helping them gauge the success of new products, early customers also help curb the holiday rush, and combined with all their work during the year, it all makes everything run smoothly come Christmas time.
