Production of Christmas tree toys. “Letidor” was here: the oldest factory of Christmas tree decorations in Russia Making molds for Christmas tree decorations

There is a year-round workshop in the Crafts Park Christmas decorations Christmas Art. Visitors will see the process of creating modern New Year's decorations from glass, wood and porcelain, learn various styles of painting and decorating Christmas tree decorations at master classes and will be able to buy ready-made decorations, including a unique New Year's collection dedicated to VDNKh.

Every day in the workshop Christmas Art experienced artist-designers will introduce adults and children to one of the most interesting and truly fabulous technologies- production of glass, porcelain and wooden Christmas tree decorations.

Visitors will be shown classic and modern technology painting and decorating, and during the master classes they will offer to create a Christmas tree decoration themselves in any style you like (steammunk, stained glass painting, three-dimensional decor with Japanese marshmallow clay, decoupage, dot painting, etc.) using modern paints, 3D decor and other materials .

Christmas tree decorations are a special type of product that is almost always produced using manual labor. Multi-colored balloons and painted figures bring a festive feeling to the house. There are no criteria for choosing Christmas tree decorations - it is purely a matter of taste. Christmas tree decorations come in glass, plastic, and wood, sold individually and in sets. All manufacturers sell their products at retail and wholesale. Based on popularity and user opinions, we have compiled for you a rating of the best Christmas tree decoration factories.

The best foreign Christmas tree decoration factories

The production of Christmas tree decorations abroad is even better developed than in Russia. Decorating the Christmas tree is of great importance there. Foreign toys can also be purchased from us - some trading companies purchase them wholesale from manufacturers and sell them at retail. We invite you to get acquainted with the best foreign companies producing Christmas tree decorations.

5 Christopher Radko Company

Large selection of decorations for New Year and Christmas
A country: Italy, Czech Republic, Germany, Poland
Rating (2019): 4.6

Large, one of the most famous companies producing glass Christmas tree decorations and other Christmas decorations. All products are distinguished by bright colors and high quality. A close look at the toy immediately shows that real craftsmen worked on it.

Now the factory's production facilities are located in four countries - Italy, Poland, the Czech Republic and Germany. To date, the company has produced about 18 million glass Christmas tree decorations. According to various sources, from 40% to 60% of the collection of products is updated annually, that is, production does not stand still, it is constantly improved, supplemented with new sets and individual jewelry.

4 Kurt S. Adler

The most famous toys in America
Country: USA
Rating (2019): 4.7

One of the largest manufacturers of Christmas decorations. American Kurt Adler in the middle of the last century began supplying Christmas decorations from different countries– East and West Germany, Czechoslovakia, Italy. Later, its own production was established. Adler's products quickly became popular among collectors - as the assortment included very interesting items.

On this moment The production is carried out by the children of the company founder. Factories have been built in 15 countries - about 200 production enterprises in total. Among the range of products you can find painted balloons, figurines in the form of animal characters, movie stars and simply cute toys.

3 Komozja

Some of the most beautiful toys
Country: Poland
Rating (2019): 4.8

The products of the famous Polish manufacturer are distinguished by their unique style and impeccable beauty. They began to be produced a very long time ago - back in the 30s of the 20th century. The factory's toys quickly became popular due to their originality and high quality. Now Komozja Christmas tree decorations resemble jewelry - they are so beautiful and elegant.

Each toy is made and painted by hand and carries a whole story. The peculiarity is the preservation of the old style, which brings comfort and a real feeling of Christmas to the house. Toys are produced individually and in themed sets. For example, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. The only drawback of Polish-made Christmas tree decorations is their high cost.

2 Old World Christmas

Best Christmas Classics
Country: USA
Rating (2019): 4.9

The first toys of this company were released back in the 70s of the twentieth century. The main office was located in Washington state, production plants were first located in Europe, then they were moved to China in order to reduce production costs. The company's toys correspond to the classic Christmas style. According to the owners of the factory, the same manufacturing techniques are used in production as in the 1800s, so each toy is a small work art.

The company's product range includes beautiful balls, figures of snowmen, Santa Claus, various animals, themed toys. All products are made and painted by hand. The peculiarity of the painting technique is that the paint is applied from the inside; from the outside, the drawing can be supplemented with only a few strokes. The company also produces garlands for Christmas trees and antique postcards.

1 Krebs Glas Lauscha

Exclusive collectible toys
Country: Germany
Rating (2019): 5.0

It is considered one of the first factories to begin producing Christmas tree decorations. The first balls appeared already in 1848. At that time, the production of toys in Russia was poorly developed - they were purchased in bulk mainly in Germany. At first, only balls were made, gradually production became more complicated, and various interesting shapes appeared. Now the company still remains one of the oldest and largest manufacturers in this area.

All toys are hand painted and are expensive. They are sold in sets and single copies, packaged in beautiful boxes. Among the products of the German manufacturer there are also exclusive, collectible toys. For example, in 1991, a red ball was produced in a single copy, covered with an openwork gold mesh and inlaid with 12 diamonds. The cost of this Christmas tree decoration was about 20,000 €.

The best Russian Christmas tree decoration factories

Russian manufacturers of Christmas tree decorations have a less rich history, but, nevertheless, several quite large and well-known companies, producing high-quality toys. Products from domestic companies have more affordable prices.

5 Krona

Unique designer toys
Country Russia
Rating (2019): 4.6

Less known, but worthy of attention manufacturer. All glass new Year decoration are developed by a team of designers and artists. The toys are produced in limited editions and are therefore unique in their kind. Each ball or figurine is packed in an individual box. Toys from this manufacturer are not only an elegant decoration for the Christmas tree, but also an excellent gift souvenir for the New Year.

Toy painting is done entirely by hand. In the company's assortment you will find various funny figurines of Santa Claus, bears, other animals and fairy-tale characters.

4 Lavrovskaya factory of artistic painting

Beautiful wooden Christmas tree decorations
Country Russia
Rating (2019): 4.7

Christmas tree decorations from this factory are not like products from other manufacturers. They are made not from glass or plastic, but from wood. Bright balls and bells look very original. They will be useful for families with children or restless pets - they cannot be broken or injured.

In addition to Christmas tree decorations, the factory produces nesting dolls, New Year's decorations, and holiday-themed magnets. One wooden Christmas ball will cost about 500 rubles - quite expensive. But, considering that the toys are made by hand and have no analogues, you can understand the pricing system.

3 Frost

Balloons with exclusive painting
Country Russia
Rating (2019): 4.8

Not a very large Russian enterprise for the production of glass Christmas tree decorations. All stages, except metallization, are performed manually - from making a ball or mold to painting and applying a design. The company's assortment is represented by a wide selection of products - these are balls of various diameters, tops, about 40 types of figurines, beautiful pendants, cones.

The factory produces no more than 500 Christmas balls with one pattern, so all products can be called exclusive. The collection of drawings is constantly changing. The factory offers excursions during which visitors can watch the process of making toys and take part in their painting.

2 Herringbone

The best selection of toys and garlands
Country Russia
Rating (2019): 4.9

One of the oldest companies producing glass Christmas tree decorations. Located in the city of Klin, this is where the Russian glassblowing industry originated. The company's craftsmen carefully preserve old glass craft technologies and use exclusively hand-painted toys. The product range includes products made in classic and modern styles.

On sale you can find elegant balls with decorative paintings and thematic designs, sets of toys based on fairy tales, as well as tree toppers, various garlands and much more. The choice of New Year's decorations is very wide. A museum is opened at the enterprise. Nearby there is a store where you can buy factory products wholesale or retail.

1 Ariel

Christmas tree decorations with Russian character
Country Russia
Rating (2019): 5.0

Christmas tree toys in Nizhny Novgorod began to be produced in the first half of the last century in the Gorky industrial cooperative artel "Children's Toy". Without immediately receiving proper development, the company did not operate for a long time. Its second heyday occurred in 1996 - the production of Christmas tree decorations was launched again. More modern technologies are now being used and the range has been expanded. In addition to decorative coloring, thematic painting is used.

The assortment includes collectible sets of balls, but most of the products are intended exclusively for decorating the New Year tree. There are many funny toys with a pronounced character - a perky dancer, a merchant's wife with a samovar, a good-natured king. The decorations are made in Russian style and are very reminiscent of fairy-tale characters. There are also beautiful ones Christmas balls.

You've already grown up, but you probably remember that childhood delight when your parents took out a box of Christmas tree decorations and how you unwound the tangled wires New Year's garland how they were looking for a burnt out light bulb in it... And the smell of fresh spruce or pine! After all, the Christmas tree must be real, no artificial crafts! It's small children's miracle, to be involved in the creation of a holiday - decorating the New Year tree! There were only a few factories of Christmas tree decorations in the Soviet Union, one of them was in the village of Klavdievo, Kyiv region.

But the most interesting thing is that twenty years after the collapse of the USSR, the process of producing Christmas tree decorations remains the same handmade and vintage! They heat the glass manually, blow out the balls, and paint them. An absolutely amazing flashback - at other enterprises there are computers, conveyors, sterile cleanliness, but here there is a very cozy scoop. In the positive sense of this term!

The factory was founded in 1949, survived the crisis of the 90s, but nevertheless restored its functioning and is still operating, gradually increasing production volumes, trying to achieve Soviet indicators.

Do the stoves burn real wood?! Vintage and naturalness even in this

Let's move on to the production of Christmas tree decorations itself, the first stage is the glass blowing shop:

The starting material is 50cm glass tubes, which are produced in Belarus.

The tube is heated at a temperature above 1,000 degrees, from one tube up to 20 balls or 5-10 “icicles” or tops are obtained per tree.

And then balls of various diameters are blown by hand, the maximum size is 150mm. The lungs of the workers in this workshop blow out a strictly dosed volume of air, the error is no more than 5% when the number of balloons per shift is 150-200! At the end we get a transparent glass ball, which needs another 5 minutes to cool.

The next stage is silvering. This is exactly the most spectacular and interesting moment. Everything is very simple from a chemical point of view, but very impressive in person. The children are delighted, the excursion groups change every 5-7 minutes, there are so many people!

First, a solution consisting of silver oxide, ammonia and distilled water is injected into each ball blank:

Then they dip into hot water (50 degrees) for a few seconds and shake the solution inside the ball; the so-called “silver mirror reaction”, when silver is deposited on the walls.

Here is another transparent ball:

And a second later it’s silver:

Then the balls are painted in one background color and dried:

At the last stage, the toys are decorated artistically. For some reason you can’t shoot here, but in reality no one controls it:

High production technologies are not used here, so the “blue screen of death” is quite sufficient:

This kind of “golden” crumb is applied to a toy that has been pre-treated with glue:

Anyone can blow out a balloon, but can you try blowing out a train?! To do this, the factory workers have 3D-printers, 3D-light - 100,500 blows at a certain angle and flow intensity - and the locomotive is ready!

Each worker in the decoration workshop makes from 3-4 to 50 toys in one shift, depending on the complexity.

These are the balls that are produced per shift: 4-6:

A popular entertainment for large companies is toys with a logo:

Well, the last room is where the “necks” are cut off and the fasteners are put on, and then the balls are packaged. The machine that performs the cutting is equipped with a diamond wheel:

How much does it cost? The cost of balls in the store is from 15g ($2) with thermal printing to $15-30 for handmade balls:

The plant usually operates from spring to January, depending on orders, and guests are always welcome here.

The market for New Year's goods has certain specifics. The production of Christmas tree decorations does not require expensive and technically complex equipment, but it is impossible without qualified personnel.

It is often quite difficult to find specialists in their field, which creates additional difficulties. Nevertheless, despite the factors that discourage investors, the profitability of such a business is quite high. How are Christmas tree decorations made? What costs will this activity require? How to competently organize a business and fill an empty niche in the market? Read about this in the article.

Seasonal or non-seasonal business?

People buy New Year's paraphernalia immediately before the holidays, so sales of Christmas tree decorations should start in September, and not earlier. It turns out that this business is seasonal? Not certainly in that way. Yes, indeed, you will receive the bulk of the profit in the last three to four months of the year, but the production of glass balls and other Christmas tree decorations is carried out all year round without interruption. Throughout the twelve months, craftsmen work, trying to produce as much as possible. more toys. And at the end of the year, the products sell out like hot cakes, which provides you with a good profit.

But you need to take into account one nuance. During the working period, you will have to pay rent and utility bills, pay wages to employees, purchase raw materials and materials at your own expense, that is, you need a fairly large starting capital. But at the end of the year, all investments will be returned with interest.

On the issue of competition

Many entrepreneurs are afraid to engage in such a business because they believe that there is huge competition in it. This is actually a misconception. Yes, all the shops and street outlets are filled with Christmas tree decorations before the New Year, so it seems that there is simply no place for newcomers.

In reality, there are only a few dozen domestic manufacturers of these products, and there are approximately the same number of wholesalers selling goods. At the same time, the company exports the bulk of its products abroad (for some, up to 90 percent of its products are exported).

So where does this variety come from on store shelves? New Year's toys? The fact is that we import most of our Christmas tree decorations from China. One large domestic factory can produce no more than three hundred to five hundred thousand units of products per year. In general, fifteen to twenty million toys enter the market annually Russian manufacturers, representing less than 40 percent of the market.

All other products are supplied from China. The production of Christmas tree decorations in this country has been put on stream, but most of the products are made of plastic and, accordingly, are not of good quality. But such toys are also cheaper than glass ones.

Assessing prospects

It is quite difficult to compete with Chinese products because of their cheapness, but it is possible. Russian New Year's decorations have a high degree of finesse, excellent quality, and are distinguished by their uniqueness and variety of design. Nowadays, domestic manufacturers are actively introducing new technologies, automating some stages of production, which makes it possible to update the range more often in accordance with fashion trends New Year's decor.

Such innovations are perceived very positively by consumers - people are tired of low-quality stamped products and want to see classic vintage toys and glass balls familiar from childhood on their Christmas tree. Therefore, although the market for New Year's decorations is still dominated by imported goods, there is significant potential for the expansion and development of domestic production.

Making Christmas tree toys

As already mentioned, significant technical equipment is not required to create such products. After all, almost the entire process is done manually. The cost of equipment will be about fifty to one hundred thousand rubles, and the same amount will need to be spent on materials and raw materials. Special attention pay attention to the condition of the room: it should have good ventilation, because most of the work involves the use high temperatures. We will tell you step by step how the production of Christmas tree decorations is carried out.

Purging

First, glassblowers use a gas torch to blow balls out of glass tubes. This kind of work requires skill and extreme accuracy. Experienced craftsmen use a minimum amount of materials and devices and select by eye the required size of the glass tube, the optimal fire mode, determine the moment of air injection and the uniformity of rotation. And the permissible error (just imagine!) is only 0.2 millimeters.

How to make a figurine toy from an inflatable ball? For this purpose, special pliers are used. It is necessary that the ball have very thin glass walls, and this is quite difficult to achieve, because the glass cools quickly, as a result of which tension is created inside the product.

The production of Christmas tree decorations is impossible without the involvement of qualified and experienced glassblowers, so start looking for suitable specialists in advance. Since the work is almost entirely manual, productivity will not be high - one master can produce only 200-250 balls per day. The number of glassblowers you need to hire will depend on the volume of products you want to produce. In the regions, the salary of such specialists starts from fifteen thousand rubles.

Metallization

Cooled glass blanks are placed in containers with reagents, where they are coated (to add shine) with a thin layer of metal (aluminum or silver). A special composition (for example, ammonia, silver oxide and distilled water) is injected inside the products, after which they are placed in baths of hot water, under the influence of which a reaction occurs, and silver is deposited on the walls.

Painting and drying

The production of Christmas tree decorations continues in the painting shop, where they arrive after metal plating. Here the primary background painting of the balls is carried out. This must be done with constant rotation of the products so that air does not penetrate under the paint layer. Otherwise, bubbles will appear and the coating will be damaged. Toys are painted with nitro enamels, nitro varnishes and other materials.

When varnishing and selecting paints, the method of creative variation is used, as a result each product is unique and unique. You can varnish Christmas balls in containers with paint and varnish materials or in cabins with hoods. But in this case, the process is also done manually - the toys are gradually immersed in paint, while rotating so that no air remains under the film.

After varnishing, the products are placed vertically to avoid flowing into the trays of the drying chamber filled with sawdust and sand. Then, manually using a rag, the remaining sawdust and sand are removed from the decorative varnish layer, and the glass toys are sent to the artists for final decoration.

Painting

This stage, like the previous ones, involves the use of manual labor. Design artists know exactly how to make decorations from balloons of extraordinary beauty. A design is applied to the product and, if necessary, covered with glitter. Painting toys is an even more labor-intensive process than blowing balloons, so the work speed of artists is lower than that of glassblowers. One master produces 50-100 products per day.

After the design is applied, the tip is cut off from the decoration and a cap with a loop is put on this place. That's it, the toy is ready!

Package

Pay special attention to how the products will be packaged. Manufacturers often outsource the work of producing cardboard decorative boxes to contractors. But wholesalers often complain that not a single shipment reaches retailers safely, because many toys break during transportation. Of course, this will negatively affect your reputation, so develop safe packaging, even if this slightly increases the cost of the products.

Nuances

As already mentioned, you will have to cover the costs of producing Christmas balls and glass figurines from your own pocket or through a loan, since wholesale sales begin no earlier than September. Many companies use borrowed funds, and then, as goods are sold, repay the loans. Of course, this entails certain risks. In addition, the prices for New Year's decorations cannot be significantly increased, otherwise your products will not be able to compete with cheap Chinese products.

However, there are opportunities to increase revenue. So, some businessmen are trying to work for export, others organize paid tours of the factory for everyone, during which you can observe the process of making toys and even try to create a glass masterpiece yourself. Go for it - and everything will work out! Good luck!