The business began with a family problem at Christmas.

Balsam Hill is an artificial Christmas tree brand that grew out of one family’s holiday. English Wikipedia describes it as a California-based online store for artificial Christmas trees, wreaths, accessories and artificial flowers, and says it was founded in 2006 by Thomas “Mac” Harman, who remains chief executive. The parent company, Balsam Brands, describes itself on its own website as a privately held company, founded in 2006, that designs, sources and distributes holiday and home décor.

The origin story is told the same way in more than one place. In a May 2015 interview published by Insights by Stanford Business, from the Stanford Graduate School of Business, Harman said he had always had real trees growing up, but decided to go into the artificial tree business after learning that his brother-in-law was allergic to real ones. The interview notes that Harman graduated from the Stanford Graduate School of Business in 2005, the year before the company began. Balsam Brands’ own timeline tells the same story: unable to find a realistic artificial tree on the market, its future chief executive had a first batch made, and the business was formed when demand outran supply.

The first season was small. Harman told Insights by Stanford Business that he worked out of his apartment, that he once fell asleep at his desk and woke to the phone ringing, and that the rush to be ready in time meant choosing a warehouse partner that missed shipments and had to be replaced. His summary of the lesson was blunt: “You can’t move Christmas.” He said the company had been funded by friends and family rather than venture capital, and that inventory has to be ordered many months before a season whose size cannot be known in advance.

From one tree to a year-round décor range.

The product at the centre of the brand is the realistic artificial tree. The 2015 Insights by Stanford Business interview said Balsam designs and manufactures the trees it sells, and that Harman designs most of them himself. Wikipedia says Balsam Hill holds a patent for its Flip Tree, a design meant to make putting a tree up and taking it down simpler; Balsam Brands’ timeline dates the Flip Tree to 2014, when it says Balsam Hill became the exclusive home of the design. The same year, the company says, Balsam Hill moved beyond trees into wider holiday and home décor.

The range has kept widening since. Balsam Brands says Balsam Hill added a collection of spring florals in 2017, built with the same attention to realism as its trees, and that in 2023 it added fresh and preserved greenery as well as gourmet food and gifts. Wikipedia lists wreaths, garlands and seasonal home accessories alongside the trees, and notes that Balsam Hill products have appeared on the sets of Hallmark Channel films. Balsam Brands says the trees, wreaths and garlands appeared on the holiday set of The Ellen DeGeneres Show in 2007, the brand’s second season.

The parent company has also widened its portfolio. Balsam Brands says the furniture makers Thos. Baker and Maine Cottage joined the group in 2018. Its website now lists three lines: Balsam Hill; Balsam Hill Studio, which sells souvenir ornaments inspired by holiday destinations; and holiday lighting and décor sold under the GE name, for which Balsam Brands describes itself as the global licensee.

Design and documentation.

Christmas decor and ornament brands occupy an unusual corner of the home trade. Their products are bought for a few weeks of the year but kept for many more, unpacked from the same boxes each December and often handed down within a family, so a name in this field is asked to stand for continuity as much as for novelty.

Much of the category leans on borrowed tradition: mouth-blown glass, carved figures, village scenes and old-fashioned lettering that point back to older European workshop traditions. Behind that look, the companies themselves may be family firms, importers, designers who work with makers elsewhere, or businesses that have changed owners several times, and the place a brand calls home is not always the place its pieces are made.

Each guide separates what independent sources record from what a company says about itself — who founded it and where, who owns it now, where its pieces are produced and how its packaging and marks have looked over time — and marks plainly what rests only on the company’s own word.

A Silicon Valley company with offices across three continents.

The company grew from the San Francisco Peninsula. Balsam Brands says it moved eight miles south to Redwood City, California, in 2013, and opened a seasonal showroom in Burlingame that year, along with its first printed catalogue; Wikipedia describes the Burlingame site as an outlet store. In 2015 Harman told Insights by Stanford Business he saw the company as counter-cultural for Silicon Valley, a business selling physical goods and growing “the old-fashioned way”.

International growth followed early. Balsam Brands says Balsam Hill launched in the United Kingdom in 2011 and in Australia, Germany and France in 2012, the same year it ran its first television commercial. It says it hired its first team members in Manila in 2010, opened an office in Boise, Idaho, in 2011, set up a regional operating headquarters in Manila called Balsam International in 2015, opened an office in Dublin the same year, and added a Canadian office in Ontario in 2022. Wikipedia says a dedicated Balsam Hill Canada site launched in 2024.

Shops and public displays now sit beside the website. Wikipedia says the first Balsam Hill Studio opened in Lahaina, Hawaii, in 2024, aimed at travellers. Balsam Brands says 2023 marked the first year of a partnership with Rockefeller Center in New York, when the skating rink’s chalets were dressed for the holidays, and that in 2019 it updated its company logo and employer branding.

For a design guide, Balsam Hill shows how a seasonal product can carry a brand built on realism rather than novelty, with the tree itself presented as a lifelike natural object. Compare a fellow artificial-tree brand in our National Tree Company brand guidelines and a Christmas collectables brand in our Department 56 brand guidelines. For this guide we use balsam green, gilt and berry red with a serif, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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