The Man Behind the Saks 5th ave Holiday Light Show! -With Dan Casterella

0:00Hello, everyone, and welcome to The New Yorker, a podcast by New York City Cop. I am your host, Kelly Kopp, published photographer, New York City tour business owner, real estate content creator, podcaster, and above all else, a New Yorker. Ladies and gentlemen, the next book looks about, Craig is now right. Stand clear of the closing doors, please.

0:36This is a time square.

0:54With me today, I have CEO Dan Castorella. He is the leader of American Christmas. His company provides Christmas decorations for Radio City Music Hall, Saks Fifth Avenue, as well as storefronts and venues all across the United States. But above all else, Dan is a New Yorker. Hey, Dan, welcome to the show. How are you doing today, my friend? I'm good. How are you doing? I'm good. What'd you say? Thanks for having me. Oh, thanks for coming in. It's an honor, buddy. I know you're super busy with all the Christmas decorations. I mean, you are the man of New York City when it comes to the decorations and everything.

1:28So I know you're crazy busy. So thanks for joining us because that means a lot to anybody. Thanks for having me. Yeah, I'm going on day 94, I think. Day 94. And we have four days left. Jeez. And then what do you do after these four days? We reset for a little bit and we plan for takedown. Do you have any time off? I mean, I'll get more into this later, but do you get time off or you take a break? Not really. will take a few days right before Christmas. But, you know, we're still servicing. We're working with our clients at that point. So not really, but it does slow down right before Christmas.

2:08Nice, nice. For people who may not know the name American Christmas, but definitely know the magic you create, how do you describe what the company does and what is American Christmas as well? Yep. Yeah, so most people know our work, but they don't know who does it. So American Christmas has been around for over 50 years. We're commercial holiday designers, installers, and project managers. We decorate some of the most iconic locations in New York City. You had mentioned Radio City and Saks Fifth Avenue, but we work with a lot of the major real estate companies like Tishman Spire, Vernado Realty Trust, and flagship retailers like Macy's and Bloomingdale's and Cartier, just to name a few.

2:57But what we're doing is we're coming in and we're designing these displays, engineering them, maintaining them year over year. And then as well as well as evolving them for our clients when they want new renditions of what we've done. And how did you get into this? Like, where did this begin for you in your life with American Christmas? Yeah, I was actually in college and I had a family friend who did the banking for the company. Oh, wow. And I college was not my strong place in life. I was failing out and I had my professor at the time say, you're working for this Christmas company. It seems like that's all you care about.

3:43You should go work for them and drop out of school because you're taking a spot from someone who should be here. Wow. So you're already working for them. Yes. And doing what at this time? I was just doing installations right seasonally you just just applied and got the job uh again i had a family friend oh that's right i did the banking and had got me a job as i was in between schools and yeah so i was doing that and i had a lot of passion for it right and my professor who ran the art school atst john's was basically like you know what you should go work for that company That company is going to give you more than school can give you here.

4:23And boy, were they right. Yeah, it worked out well for me. Yeah, yeah. I mean, had you know then where you'd be today, you wouldn't probably believe it, correct? Yeah. I mean, prior to going to college, I used to decorate homes in high school. Oh, really? Yes. So my love for Christmas started at a very young age. I was decorating houses, my own house with my grandfather and my dad. So that's kind of how I got into it. It's always been something that made me happy. And how old were you when you helped starting decorating? I was probably like seven or eight. That's amazing. So, and I did it through high school, just decorating homes.

5:06I would cut class during this time of year to decorate homes. That's pretty amazing. And where was this? In Westchester. Westchester. So you grew up in Westchester. And from there, I went to college and then fell into American Christmas, luckily. And it's been a good rock for me. So tell us a little bit about you, Dan. So you were born where? And then tell us about your family. Yeah, so I'm from Westchester, New York. Just above Manhattan. Yep, just above Manhattan, born in Portchester. And I live in Harrison, New York. now um about a 30 minute train ride to the city right and you take the metro north or yes yeah yep and i have i tara my wife tara and two kids at home nice and yeah we have we have a we have a good comfortable little life and so with what your job is decorating new york the entirety basically of New York city.

6:12I assume they don't see you at Christmas time. Yeah, it definitely comes and goes. Um, I, I become the father that in and out this time of year. Right. And it echoes for actually a lot of my staff too. We go on this once the season comes really the end of September until basically January. I'm going to ask you that me and my staff, you kind of give up a lot a personal time. Right. And it's our time to perform for a client. So what we do is I like to say, we kind of operate like a calendar. You have your, you have this, you know, 10, eight to 10 week period where you're very busy. It's overwhelming and you have to perform all of your work.

6:58Right. And then come the middle of January, I like to say the pendulum swings the other way and you get more life and you're right more life balance and be with your family more work can take the back seat for a little while so we our years kai say broken up into you know a third you know the first half it's all about you know take hey do what you have to do with your family the next third it's 50 50 and then the last third it's work you know you are dealing with some of the most important, well-known clients in the world here in New York City. How is that stress? Is that stressful? It is stressful.

7:38And we continue to grow with the clients. I think the hardest part of our business is that it's seasonal. So trying to train new employees, trying to even work with our clients, it's sometimes difficult because everything works against seasonal businesses. Right. So we still have to operate 12 months a year. But in theory, we collect our revenue over 10 weeks. Right. That's incredible. So start. So start from January to December. What's what's how's that go for you? Yeah, I'll actually start today. We are wrapping up our installation season now. We have our first meetings for 2026 in a week. The first proposals for 2026 will go out right before Christmas.

8:25then we'll go into our takedown season yeah that ends the end of february right actually and at that point we really go into high gear now for next year and the selling season starts again in december and goes through the following december right sale could take 12 months or it could take 12 days yeah so you're just constantly just thinking about what's for next year thinking what i need to do today what i need to do next year yes i mean we started buying for next christmas in september of this year so we are about to start development for new product for 2027. We're about eight weeks out from starting 2027 product development.

9:14So everything is, you know, minimum 12 months in advance in our world. Wow. Well, real quick, I want you to take us behind the scenes. What does it actually take to create a major NYC holiday installation from the concept to the finished product? Yeah, I would say it's a team of about five people working on something for anywhere from three to eight months is probably the average time frame to get something developed on a large scale. And there's a project management or a graphic designer, a designer, an account manager, and a production supervisor all working together to deliver one of these large scale projects from our team.

10:04And it, it starts with a site visit that evolves into doing artwork and then from their proposal. And then it, the ball kind of gets rolling at that point. Is there different teams for each project or is it just this, is it collectively everyone working together? Collectively everyone working together, but we have different specialties for different people. We have one group that just focuses on office buildings. We have another group that just focuses on retail. Wow. And how did you become the head of the business? Yeah. All American Christmas. Yeah. We start, I started working at American Christmas in 2003.

10:54And at that point, um i was just in production and doing installs and i worked my way up um from there i went into sales and then i went into management so on but in 2017 we bought the company and we at that point decided we bought the company and my partner in austria has 40 of these christmas companies around the world. So American Christmas was the American entity to MK Illumination at that point. And that's how I came into this role. I was part of the merger that happened in 2017. Wow. That's amazing, Dan. That's impressive, you know, because, you know, my podcast is all about people's passion for New York and what they do.

11:49And this is what you are, you know, the passion for what you do passion for new york and just goes to show when you have a passion you can do anything yeah you know i agree and i actually never recognized the passion until this year this was a one of our more difficult seasons for a lot of reasons what what's up um just anything from buying and having to deal with tariffs right that has to be difficult that has insurance requirements, working in New York city becomes more difficult year over year. It was just when you bring it all together, it was a difficult year this year, but it was probably two weeks ago.

12:33I'm driving through the city and it again, having one of those days. And I realized that I get so upset when stuff doesn't go right because I care so much. Like what we do in New York millions, I mean, you know, this better than anyone, millions of people come here every Christmas to see the decorations. And I think me, but more importantly, most of my team holds that on their shoulders and takes a lot of pride in that. Right. Well, definitely. I mean, you can feel it with your entire team. Yeah. They really do wear that on their shoulders and carry that pride. You know, but also it also thinks it comes, you know, also from their leader per se, which is you and you know the way you are and the way your passion exudes from you and the way you treat people too you're a very nice person as well and I think that has a lot to do with it too yeah you're a good guy I appreciate that I don't know if everyone feels that way but but yeah it gets stressful at times but I like to I again it's like we we have we come from this seasonal world of you get these peak highs and lows yeah and right now we're in the high and you know we're going to come down off that roller coaster peak at some point and the pendulum is going to go the other way and it's going to be everything's going to go into the favor of you know what take care of ourselves right right well you know dan what part of your job gives you the greatest satisfaction walking through the city and watching people see all the decoration i tell that's the one thing i tell every new employee you won't understand what we do until you walk through the city in december and see people enjoying our work i completely understand that i can see that too so american christmas i've been to and up at westchester correct yes Mount Vernon, Mount Vernon.

14:38And it's incredible. I mean, it's this huge, how many square feet warehouse? 110 ,000 square feet. And you have holiday lane there too, right? We don't have holiday lane. We have, it's just a retail store now. What is holiday lane? So holiday lane was a charity event that I ran the past few years, um, where we've raised over 200 grand walking through our showroom, essentially. What we've done is we had to evolve it now that we're past COVID and our clients were coming to see us more. So we turned it more into a retail shop and I have Santa Claus on the weekends now. And that's where I've been.

15:18That's where you've been. And I donate proceeds from sales to charity and we ask for donations for a picture with Santa. So we're hoping to do another 30 to$50 ,000 a share. So all proceeds go to charity. From Santa Claus. Yes. Wow. That's incredible. Yes. What a, what a great thing to do for the community. Yeah. We, again, three small charity, three small organizations around Mount Vernon that all support youth in the neighborhood. We've donated over$240 ,000 in three years. God, that's insane. What a great thing to do. That's impressive. That's impressive. Well, you know, I loved walking through the, um, the warehouse with you with Marco.

16:02Yep. It's fascinating. It's huge. And everything that I saw, can I say what I saw? Yeah. Cause now everything's out. Everything. Yeah. Almost everything. Yeah. But what I did see, you know, I'll say I saw, um, the Burberry bow, right. Or the wrapping on that goes, that went on Bloomingdale. Correct. That was, um, it was huge. Yeah. Those are about 17 feet tall. That was incredible to see. And just, you know, when it was really, I liked the energy in the warehouse everybody was really happy and upbeat and just i mean it everybody was loving what they were doing you could feel it i hope they still have that energy at this point but yeah everyone's a little bit tired yeah they are tired they are tired um but no bur you saw burberry i think you saw parts of cartier too yep um i you saw the heralding angels from rockefeller center yeah so cool to see these iconic decorations that you do for the for new york city yeah that's fascinating do you do the candy canes we do do the candy canes at 1271 and then also which are new this year um we do do the candy canes at 1271 across from radio city radio city yeah and then we also do the candy canes at 9 west 57 street oh i love those too so yeah those are the i mean those are very old.

17:23There's a bunch of New York displays that we do that are over 20 years old that have become like staples. And it becomes like a fixture to the building every Christmas. So let's talk about the ones that we all know. The candy canes, again, across the Radio City Music Hall. The candy canes at 57th and 5th per se right there at the 9 West building. So the Saks Fifth Avenue Lights, the light show. The light show is back this year. That's massive. I want to hear more about this too. And then Macy's right there, Channel Garden with the angels and the trumpets, right? Yes, that Tishman Rockefeller thing.

18:01Yep. Do you do, next to Bloomingdale's, do you do the Christmas tree there? We do at Bloomberg. At Bloomberg, love that Christmas tree. Do you do the Christmas tree off of 6th Avenue that's down in the, kind of down a little? Maybe not. Oh, the Sunken Plaza. Yeah, the Sunken Plaza. At 1221, that is. You do that as well? Yeah, that you can walk through and take a nice picture. I love it. That's a little bit newer, too, the last few years, I feel. Yeah, it's four years. And what else, what am I missing? We do the tree at Fox News. We do the Nutcrackers at 1285 Avenue of the Americas. That's incredible.

18:40Our corridor is like 5th and 6th Avenue. Right. From like 42nd Street to the park. That's like our specialty. Um, that's like the hot spot. Yeah. But, uh, yeah, I would say, you know, we, there's much more that we do, but those are the ones that are kind of like in your face when you're doing the tours of Christmas decorations in New York. I'm glad you said that right. Just right there, that there's more that you do. What, what else do you do? Yeah. I mean, it could be a small little hotel boutique hotel or, um, building lobby that, you know, has five or six tenants. um no clients too big or too small for us really yeah we we definitely cover all of we're in all five boroughs actually um but we're we do 900 installs over you know eight weeks wow can you what another boroughs can you mention some other boroughs that you yeah we're in queens We're in the Bronx.

19:41We are in, we're, we're, we're in Brooklyn. We're in Staten Island with Macy's. We're doing a lot of their decorations around the city. Oh, wow. I didn't know that. So I'm in there, in their offshoot locations. That's incredible. So Dan, how many employees are at American Christmas? So we have about 85 full-time employees at American Christmas working all year long. uh most are in new york but we do have a few scattered around the country um and what we seasonally will bloom up to about 390 employees wow on top of that we will have about another 100 subcontractors from other organizations working for us during our season that's incredible from what I understand too, since you've Dan taken over the company, correct?

20:37You have tripled revenue since joining MK Illumination. Yeah. Since 2017, we've tripled the revenue. That's insane. And that's because of you. Yeah. I'm the team and I, yeah. Yeah. But I mean, I think it's, but we've had this goal of, I also have to say some of it's just economics too. We, We, our clients are, our clients are getting bigger and we're doing more with our current clients, um, and our VIP clients. So we've been, our goal is to keep a client forever. We want to own, manage, and deliver Christmas for our clients. So when they think about it, they just think about us. We want them to be hands off as much as possible.

21:20We want them, we like to say, just write us a check a few times a year, let us deal with everything else. Right. Wow. So Dan, you don't just deal with New York city only, as we talked about your worldwide as well, nationwide, I should say mostly tell us about other areas in the country that you are in charge of as well. Yeah. So we do have offices around the world. I handle America, but we have 40 offices scattered around the world. Right. But for us, you know, in the American market. We, we operate in our putting decorations in about 35 States this year. Wow. Um, we are strong in Beverly Hills and San Francisco, Chicago, um, Dallas, Tampa, Miami, all of those traveled to all these.

22:11We do. We have every job we do, no matter where it is in the country, we'll have a full-time employee of ours on it. And then with a lot of them, we'll hire, hire local teams who have the local expertise to do that work. Why did I interrupt it? I'm sorry. Where else is it in the country? I'm so sorry. Florida, but we also, we have another operational office in Washington, DC. That's our second biggest market actually. And it's just a miniature version of what we do in New York city. Really? Yep. So that you do the candy canes and all that stuff there. Yeah, we're doing about 150 jobs in the metro Washington, D.C.

22:52I'm interested, since I'm from Florida, too, I've lived there a lot of my life, half my life here, half my life there. Is there one in Tampa I saw? Yeah, we're actually going to close the warehouse in Tampa for business reasons and move everything to our distribution center in Memphis. It makes sense for us to do that. Right. But Tampa and Miami in particular are very good markets. I was going to say that like in Florida, the cities are Tampa and Miami. Yes. How about Orlando? Does you do Orlando? We don't do Orlando. That's where I was. That's where I lived. Yeah. We don't do anything in Orlando.

23:26It's mostly Tampa and Miami for us. But the fun thing about Florida is people in Florida love Christmas. Florida is one of the largest markets in America for Christmas. The most artificial flock Christmas trees are sold in Florida year over year. really and what are artificial flock christmas they look like they're snow covered oh that's what i thought okay so yeah so it's like we we we our e-com platform christmas in america.com i would say one out of four sales go to florida really yeah do you think it's because of it's an older demographic do you think that has something to do with it i think it's that i think that it's warm.

24:10So they need to, they need to do more to have it feel like Christmas. Right. Um, I think, I think it's a, I think it's a little bit of a lot of things that contribute to it. Some of the biggest trees we've ever sold over my, you know, my 25 year career have been in Florida. Really? That's interesting. I'm trying to think of how Orlando decorates for Christmas. A lot. Yeah. And I'm, I'd love to see Miami at Christmas time. I wonder if I've been there. I'm trying to think is, you know, I spent half my life there and Florida is my, you know, my heart's in Florida and in New York. And then I go, I go in January every, uh, back to Florida in January every year.

24:47So you have family there? Yeah. My, my, when I have identical twin brother and his family and my older brother and his family. And so they all live in the, you know, in Florida. So I go back to Florida for the, for January and I just hang out with my parents and drive them crazy. I think that's a good, if I had to pick a month to not be in New York, it would be January. It's perfect. It's actually, it's, I think it's perfect because, you know, it's post, you know, the biggest season of the year. And so everybody's back in school. No one's traveling really. It's colder than you know what year. It's windy.

25:21It's, it's my least favorite time. Yeah, it is. It is mine too. And so, and actually tours really slowed down that month, month too. Um, I don't want to walk around the city. It's biting cold, you know, so I go, go hang out with my parents. but last year what's funny is i went to florida so excited that you know hang out my parents thinking like the lanai doors would be opened or whatever and it rained and it was freezing the entire time i was there and then the last day i got sunny and i was like of course the day i leave florida it's back at 70 degrees but the entire month it rained and it was ice ice cold i heard that a bunch from people yeah so it's just funny one thing i learned about what we do here in new york and around the country is everyone expects christmas but no one knows what it takes to like do a project right like we just did we just have a new we have a new client in midtown who spent 45 hours with us between a Friday and a Sunday.

26:26That's how long we were on their property. Wow. And to keep, it was rolling crews coming in and out. And at the end he was like, I can't believe this is what it takes to decorate our building, big project. Right. But they couldn't fathom like what it took to put up a 40 foot Christmas tree and two 20 foot wreaths. Right. And I think that is for a lot of people they just show up one day by design and it's up right but so much of what we do is not about a christmas tree or santa or decorations it's engineering it's logistics it's timing and i think a lot of that gets lost in you know just seeing something really pretty i i agree do you do the red christmas ornaments correct we don't do that don't do that's one of the few we don't have a few yes you know but thinking of you know that actually seeing how christmas you know decorations are put together is watching the red christmas ornaments and with the crane and everything and it takes time you know and yeah and why i was watching the sunken tree what's it called is that what it's called that's uh rockefeller management 1221 yeah i knew the america and watching i was watching that one night and how much work they put it took a few days kind of to watch them put that together that job we start on a friday night and it ends on Sunday morning.

27:49Yeah. Cause you know, I saw them put it together and I was thinking, Oh, awesome. I can come here, come here and do a reel and put it on social media. And the next morning I came and they were hard at work putting it together. I'm like, wow, this is a lot more than I anticipated. Yep. You know, I can give you a time-lapse if you wanted it. That would be really cool. Actually. Seriously. Yeah. We have it for that. People would love that. Oh my gosh. I would love that. that yes we can do a job quickly but so much of it is timing and a lot of manpower again there's we're over 400 people with their subcontractors what is the biggest project that you do from a time perspective right it would be sex that's what i was gonna say um we start installing Saks Fifth Avenue in September and opening night is usually the Monday before Thanksgiving.

28:41Correct. So from a pure timing perspective, number of nights, number of trucks, Saks is the biggest. Yep. Every year I watch, you know, it's starting little by little. You can see signs that they're starting to put the Christmas decorations, whatever the theme is that year on the front of Saks. And we all get super excited to see it. Like that's my, one of my very, that's to me, that's the first inclination that Christmas is coming. Yeah. You see something on the front of Saxon, but we don't really know what it is. Yeah. But we're like, oh, it's starting. And I think you said September, right?

29:16Yes. You know, early September. And then, okay. So two years ago they had the big, like a horoscope type thing. Yeah. That was when they partnered with Dior. Yeah. And we didn't know what that was. We didn't even know if it was Christmas because it was September at first. So that was kind of cool how we were guessing, like, what is this? Is this Christmas? It's only September. But then we saw like the enormous scale of that. I'd love that too. Do you have a favorite decoration in New York City? Or let's say you're a couple, so we won't pick one. What are your couple of your favorite decorations that you love to do or see in New York City?

29:53So ironically, my favorite decoration in New York City is something I don't do. What is that? So it's the wreaths around the neck of the tigers. I think they're tigers at the public library. I was just going to say that. Yeah, that is my favorite. Those are iconic. And it's just so subtle and so simple. what we do i always say our goal is to highlight architecture not compete the architecture nice and i think that location those are those are the statement pieces and the wreath around the neck just highlights it perfectly i agree there's like a there's like a nice story about that i feel like and so that's my favorite thing oh that's really cool and it's so simple too simple and elegant Yes.

30:47So this is a little side note. Do you know the names of the lions? I do not. So their names are Patience and Fortitude. And the way you remember which is which, I don't know how that makes sense, but it says Patience is on the left, but Fortitude is on the right. When looking at it. Yes. You're facing it. That's it. Thanks for saying that. When you're facing the New York Public Library, Patience is on your left and Fortitude is on your right because Fortitude is on 42nd. so that's a little rhymey timey kind of way to remember this comes back to me needing to be a tourist in New York and learn all this stuff just spend the day with me we'll walk around you know get a few drinks we could have a cart with us I like that what a great idea have like a rolling cart with drinks walk around the city come with us for four days to learn everything about New York you might not remember it but you know but it'll be fun it'll be really fun that's hilarious dan i love that i love that you design every year the like different installations like how what's the process like do people come to you with like the building you did like hey we want to decorate our building and then do you like do canvas it look at see what could go where and then like make a design for it and then like so so we talked about the time frame but the process we have two different types of clients we have clients who want us to do all of that work they want us to design engineer fabricate store refurbish install remove and so on then we have clients to say, this is exactly what we want.

32:34You have to give us this, go figure it out. Okay. So we can do anything. We can be the designers or quite frankly, we can just be the executors of someone who already has a design, but we have, we have a, we have a design department, project management department, account management department, um, and a production department. And those teams all, those teams work together to deliver for whatever it is our client needs are but we we like to do it all yeah um but there's a lot of times where our clients will have an in-house designer who says this is what we need it's right for our brand but we need you to figure out how to do it for us and we excel in both areas we like both markets but that's typically how it happened um Our expertise is Christmas decorations.