The lure of Kraynak's

By CYNTHIA VINARSKY
VINDICATOR BUSINESS WRITER
HERMITAGE, Pa. -- It's a deja vu kind of morning for Kristin Fisher.
Shepherding her two small children through Kraynak's Christmas Lane, the young Greenville, Pa., mother says she can't help thinking of all the times she visited the animated exhibit herself as a child.
She watches as Emma, 5, and Noah, 3, wander from one display to the next, pausing to stare at the twinkling decorated trees and to point at the moving animal figures.
"They've been begging me to bring them here for weeks," she says. "Of course, even before Halloween, they were asking when Santa's coming."
Fisher, her children and their grandfather, Roger Johnson, also of Greenville, arrived at the East State Street store by 9:30 a.m. on this weekday, so they're among the first to stroll through the free Christmas lane display.
Experienced Kraynak's shoppers, Fisher and Johnson know it's best to come early in the morning and early in the season.
Lines get longer as the holiday approaches, often snaking through the aisles of the gift and toy departments out to the parking lot.
But for now there are no lines and store clerks roam the quiet aisles, straightening the shelves and adding new merchandise.
Dan Zippie, store manager, rearranges a tot-size wooden train display set up in the middle of an aisle in the toy department.
"Kids love this thing," he said, shaking his head. "I've seen some parents who had to pry their kids away from it."
Using time wisely
Zippie and other staffers like to take advantage of the morning quiet to stack toy shipments, replenish tree ornament displays and shelve gift items -- it's much more difficult once shoppers arrive.
He pauses to answer a grandfather's questions about a minicomputer for preschoolers, one of many high-tech learning toys in stock.
"We think educational toys will be big sellers this year, but you never know," Zippie admits. "We picked the toys we're selling for Christmas way back in February. You just put yourself in the kids' shoes, try to pick and hope you're right. Once the hype starts, it's too late to reorder."
Owner George Kraynak, who shares the business with his older brother John Kraynak Jr., walks briskly through the toy train display area, greeting Zippie and other workers by name. Kraynak tries to get into the store briefly every morning before ducking into his office.
From then on, he spends most of his days huddled with designers working on details for the store's next animated holiday display.
Today he heads first for the 3-acre greenhouse area where 30,000 poinsettia plants are about to reach their peak. The plants were grown from cuttings delivered to the greenhouse and potted back in April.
He knows he'll find his brother in or near the greenhouse. John Kraynak Jr. has inherited much of the passion for plants that inspired their father, John Sr., to found Kraynak's as a nursery in 1949.
The brothers grew up working in the store, and when their father died in 1998, they split the responsibilities.
"Some people can't do it, but we've managed to stay together," Kraynak Jr. says proudly. "There's no better business in the world."
Dividing the work
Kraynak Jr. oversees the nursery, Kraynak's Lawn and Garden store, and plant nurseries in Pennsylvania and Ohio covering more than 600 acres. George oversees Kraynak's 35,000-square-foot Toyland and Gift Shop, plus the free holiday displays.
Walking past rows of lilies and other large, tropical plants, the owners pause at a large table where Mary Tomovick and Georgia Gataric are potting tiny primrose seedlings. By spring they'll be at their peak for garden planting.
"Here are two of the best green thumbers you could find," George Kraynak jokes.
Tomovick and Gataric are both Croatian immigrants who hired on at Kraynak's a year apart in the mid-1980s. They've become fast friends, working side by side in the quiet, climate-controlled greenhouse.
"We never get tired because we're always doing something different," Gataric says, her Croatian roots still apparent in her soft accent.
John and George Kraynak head off in separate directions -- John back to the lawn and garden store, and George into a narrow work room to check some spring plant numbers with greenhouse manager George Rimko.
Rimko, a 30-year veteran of Kraynak's, likes to boast that he and his five full-time greenhouse employees have 125 years of experience combined. There isn't much they don't know about shrubs, trees and flowering plants.
Dressed in a worn flannel shirt with sleeves rolled to the elbow, Rimko says he's already making plans to house 20,000 flats of annuals and 9,000 large hanging baskets for spring. "Next week we'll be starting our Easter bulbs," he says.
The Liberty man started at Kraynak's when he was 15 and learned the business from Kraynak Sr. "Eventually Mr. Kraynak took a liking to me and took me under his wing," he says, smiling.
Kraynak heads back to his office, where he meets his two main display designers, Renny Gearhart and Joyce Marrie. The three of them work with a team of about 40, including carpenters, painters and electricians, to complete the animated exhibits twice a year.
About the display
The Christmas display, with its 80 decorated trees and hundreds of animated figures, is nearing the end of its run. By now George Kraynak's planning team is close to completing designs for the Easter display, which opens Feb. 15 every year in place of Christmas Lane.
The winter display opens the week after Labor Day each year and closes Christmas Eve.
Store founder John Kraynak Sr. started Christmas Lane in 1963 when a salesman persuaded him that customers would buy more ornaments and lights if they could see the products out of the package and on display.
It was a successful marketing tool, but it also became a sentimental holiday tradition for local families. Starting with 10 trees and animated figures, Kraynak expanded to 20 trees in 1965 and to 80 trees in 1968.
The display changes every year, George Kraynak says, but he insists on keeping the Nativity scene at the end.
"At first, we did it to show the ornaments and lights, but now it's become a tradition for so many people," Kraynak says. "They come in and tell us, 'I was here when I was just this high, and now I bring my own family every year.'"
Promising to return in a few minutes, Gearhart and Marrie head off across the store to Christmas Lane to check on a reindeer figure under repair and a Mrs. Claus figure that had given them some trouble.
It's past noon, and the line has grown. Lines are longest on weekends between Thanksgiving and Christmas, they say. The store installs a canopy outside to help shield waiting customers from the weather.
"One year, we tried to keep track of how many people were going through," Marrie says. "We had them signing a guest book, but when it got more than 10 inches thick, we gave up."
The exhibit draws customers from a 70-mile radius, and Gearhart says the number is certainly in the thousands on December weekends. Locals often come as early as September to avoid the crowds.
Slipping past the crowds, Marrie and Gearhart stop in front of Mrs. Claus, a life-size, grandmotherly figure. "I'm dreaming of a white Christmas ..." she sings in a lilting soprano voice.
There were problems
It wasn't always so, Gearhart says, laughing. Mrs. Claus was new this year, and when crews first plugged her in, she sang out loud and clear in the deep, distinctly male voice of Bing Crosby. The manufacturer was quick to replace the voice mechanism, but her problems weren't over. Soon after that, the dancing figure literally broke a hip.
New parts have been ordered, but for now, Mrs. Claus stands still to do her singing. Gearhart adjusts the figure's arms and smooths her white hair before moving on.
Moving parts are bound to break in a display that runs up to 12 hours a day, seven days a week, so maintenance workers keep a constant watch for trouble.
On this day, carpenter Bob Morris is in a small work room tinkering with the antlers and electrical system in an animated reindeer. Gearhart and Marrie file in to watch.
Morris, of Pulaski, Pa., started working for Kraynak's years ago as a subcontractor, but the position has evolved into a full-time job building the Christmas and Easter displays and making constant repairs.
Morris says he spends eight hours a day, six days a week, and he never knows what he'll be doing. In early November he spent hours hanging Christmas lights along the store roofline, and display designers rely on his ingenuity to create the scenes, furniture and accessories they envision.
"We just tell him our idea and George makes it work," Gearhart pipes in.
Some of the animated figures date to the store's early displays in the 1960s, but Morris tries to replace the parts to keep them going. Morris says he loves the work, but when he leaves, he's in no mood to decorate his own house.
"To be honest," Morris says, "At home, I don't even put up a tree."
vinarsky@vindy.com