Twilight Trees turns 10! It all started with a little LED Cherry tree; little did I know that it would grow into a forest! A decade later and we’re celebrating this momentous milestone and I just want to thank you all, from the bottom of my heart, for coming along for the ride! Friends, family, colleagues and clients, your support has been the key to our success and tonight, we’ll be raising a glass to you 🥂 Happy Birthday Twilight Trees, it’s been one hell of an adventure! Bring on the next 10 🍾🌳
Susie, Founder and Creative Director of Twilight Trees
- We lit up Mayfair. When the business was in its infancy, I used to dream of the iconic venues where I would install my trees; Burlington Arcade was the absolute pinnacle and I spent a while plucking up the courage to give them a call. They beat me to it! Burlington Arcade called and commissioned a 30 tree installation with a multi-year contract. Twilight Trees decorated Mayfair’s most eminent arcade that year and put Twilight Trees on the map.
- We got big brands on board. A ‘top secret’ job is our favourite kind of job and it’s not unusual to not know who the client is. Back in the early days when we hadn’t worked with many big brands, we took our trees to a venue not knowing what to expect. When we arrived we found out that Google was the client! That was one of those moments when the dream started to feel real, big brands were seeking out our product.
- We installed at the Natural History Museum. Now this a personal one, back in the early days when I’d take my single LED Cherry up to London and back, I would drive past the National History Museum and think, ‘one day my trees will be in there’. When we got the booking for a huge society wedding under the enormous Blue Whale skeleton, I don’t think it even felt real. It was a huge job using all of our blossom trees and all of our staff and even though we’ve installed there countless times since, this is an install that I’ll never forget.
- We blossomed! We started off as an LED tree company but we decided to branch out into more lifelike trees. We started with floral blossoms that were larger and added some seasonality to our offering. We could only afford to invest in one tree at a time but they were so popular that the blossom collection quickly bloomed and we now have 10 tree collections and over 200 trees of that style and nearly 1500 in total.
- We took on an MD. In 2017 my husband Andrew agreed to help us out whilst on gardening leave. Let’s just say that a seed was certainly sown! Whilst Andrew joining the business was one of the most life changing moments of our marriage it was also a huge turning point in the business. Andrew is now our MD and very much steers the ship.
- We pivoted. As the business went from strength to strength, momentum was shattered in 2020 when the events industry came to a standstill. With staff to support and a business that we had put everything into, we had no choice but to pivot, and fast. I had a bolt of inspiration in the dead of night and the next day we built the prototype for our ‘Living Spaces’ high-end floral room dividing screens. We partnered with another manufacturer and both businesses not only survived but against all odds, thrived.
- We moved! With 8 staff sitting around the kitchen table and the garden housing 26 shipping containers of trees, it became clear that the business had outgrown our family home. In 2022, Team Twilight finally moved the business from the kitchen table, to 12,000 sq/ft of warehouse. This included production facilities, a showroom, boardroom and offices. Moving to Manor Farm was not only a logistical game changer but it upped the ante. We now have three warehouses!
- We started building a forest. The space allowed us to be more creative and whilst we had already started making trees ourselves, we now had a dedicated production zone. This allowed us to start building upon our skills and experimenting with our tree manufacturing processes. We started foraging wood from nearby farms and making trees that were not only incredibly realistic, but breathing new life into reclaimed timber.
- We became Carbon Neutral. The events industry produces 1.2bn kg of CO2e every year and although Twilight Trees is very fortunate to have based our business on a reusable product, we were determined not to be part of this statistic. Since 2021 we have audited and offset our carbon footprint across all of our events, travel, shipping and the running of our business and support a global portfolio of verified carbon reduction projects. We also plant trees for every booking through TreeApp.
- We landed in Covent Garden. There are iconic venues but iconic landmarks are a whole other level. 2023 saw Twilight Trees take over the East Piazza of Covent Garden not once, but twice! The initial installation was in collaboration with Nissan’s Formula E team and we tuned the cobbled streets pink with cherry blossom. This gave us huge exposure and the installation made it into Shop Drop Daily’s top 10 Visual Merchandising installations.
