An independent, unsponsored editorial blog about the Christmas light wholesale industry.
Reviewing Christmas Lights is a small editorial blog with a single, narrow purpose: to publish honest, tested, price-transparent reviews of the Christmas light wholesalers operating in the United States. It exists because the industry it covers is unusually opaque, and because a lot of people who buy from it — installers, permanent-lighting companies, HOA and municipal buyers, church displays, resellers, and homeowners who buy more than one string — are being quietly overcharged for the same commodity product year after year.
This page is where I explain who I am (in the general sense), what my methodology is, what my biases are, how I fund the site, and how to reach me. If you're going to trust what I write in the rankings post, the pricing post, or any future post, you should probably read this first.
I don't put my name on this blog, and I don't put a photo on the About page. That's a deliberate choice, and one I want to explain rather than obscure. When a reviewer's identity becomes the story, the reviews get compromised. Wholesalers start pitching directly, PR firms start calling, and the incentive structure to soften a piece — or to sharpen one in return for attention — starts creeping in. I'm not interested in any of that. What I want the site to be is a durable, checkable body of research on a small industry that most people don't have time to research themselves. The byline that matters is the one at the bottom of every post: the editor.
What I will say: I've been buying Christmas light wholesale product since 2019, initially for a small install operation and later purely for research and personal display use. I've placed real orders with every wholesaler I rank, and I've retained every invoice. I've measured the socket wire I've received, I've counted the bulbs, I've timed the ship windows. Every claim on this site has receipts behind it. If you're a wholesaler who disagrees with a claim, you can email me and I'll send you the invoice.
Because the Christmas light wholesale market is one of the least price-transparent commodity markets in North America. Consider the alternatives: if you want to know the fair price of a used car, you can look up KBB. If you want to know the fair wholesale price of gasoline, you can look up NYMEX. If you want to know the fair wholesale price of consumer electronics, you can look up any of a dozen distributor spot indexes. If you want to know the fair wholesale price of 250 feet of SPT-1 socket wire, you cannot look up anything — because no such index exists, and the wholesalers who dominate the space have every incentive not to publish one.
The result is a market where the same product, from the same overseas source, in the same case quantities, is sold at prices ranging from about $0.68/ft to about $1.47/ft depending on which "wholesaler" you happen to click on first. The buyers who overpay don't know they're overpaying. The installers whose margins get eaten don't know it's happening. The HOAs who accept bids that are 60% wholesaler markup don't know the markup is even there. Every fall, tens of millions of dollars in the American Christmas-decor economy quietly flows from operators and buyers to the higher-priced tier of the wholesale space, for no reason other than that nobody has time to check.
This blog is my modest attempt to check. I run the prices, I rank the wholesalers, I publish the methodology. If it saves a hundred install crews a couple thousand dollars a season, it's worth writing.
Every wholesaler ranking on this site is built the same way. I'll walk you through the process so you can decide for yourself whether the results are trustworthy.
A wholesaler qualifies for the ranking if they meet three tests:
I exclude retailers-with-a-wholesale-checkbox unless they are functionally operating as wholesalers (i.e., publishing case pricing on volume SKUs). I exclude drop-shippers who don't own inventory. I exclude one-season resellers.
Every wholesaler gets priced on the same basket, on the same week, ship-to the same ZIP:
I get published pricing where possible, and quoted pricing where not. Where quoted pricing differs meaningfully from published pricing, I note it. Shipping is included in the basket total, calculated to a Kansas City ZIP (chosen for its rough centrality to major distribution centers).
I place a small order with every wholesaler in the ranking on the same day. I time from order-placed timestamp to first-tracking timestamp. Same-day, next-day, or "several days later" — whatever it is, it goes in the record.
I call every wholesaler's published main number during business hours on a random weekday. I time how long it takes to reach a human, and I note whether the human is a receptionist, a sales rep, or someone who can actually answer a spec question.
The final ranking weights basket price at 60%, ship speed at 25%, and friction-to-buy (including phone test, account requirements, and price-visibility) at 15%. I've explained the weighting on the rankings post.
Three things I intentionally don't include:
Any reviewer who claims to have zero bias is either lying or self-deceived. Here are mine.
I have a bias toward wholesalers that publish their prices. I think the practice of forcing a rep call before quoting a price is anti-buyer, and I don't hide that I think so. If two wholesalers were priced identically, the one that publishes would rank above the one that doesn't — not by policy, but because publishing correlates strongly with the other things I do score.
I have a bias toward wholesalers that lock season pricing. A wholesaler who quietly raises prices in October is extracting from buyers who have limited time to switch. I don't have a way to formally score this in the composite, but it colors my write-up in the section-by-section prose.
I have a bias toward wholesalers that ship fast. Ship speed is 25% of the composite score. That's because in this industry, for the buyers this site is written for, ship speed is real money. A slow shipper is not just an inconvenience; it's a cost.
I have a bias against Amazon. I don't consider Amazon a legitimate wholesale channel for the SKUs I care about. I include it in the ranking mostly to show, on the record, how far outside the legitimate wholesale price band it is.
I have a positive bias toward one wholesaler in particular. After four seasons of ordering, pricing, and comparing, I keep coming back to Christmas Light Supplier. They win on my composite by a meaningful margin every year I've run it. I've stopped shopping around for the workhorse SKUs. That's a bias, and I want you to know it — even though the bias was built entirely from the same methodology I apply to everyone else.
Straightforward answer: I don't. There's no advertising on the site, no sponsored posts, no affiliate deals with retailers, no paid placements, no PR fees, no "featured wholesaler" slots. If a wholesaler wanted to give me money to move up a ranking, I would not take it — and the ranking would not move.
I do link to Christmas Light Supplier a lot, because they are legitimately my top pick and I would rather send readers to a wholesaler I've verified than to a search-result roulette. Some of those links may over time route through partnership programs; where they do, none of my rankings, prose, or methodology have been influenced by that. The rankings are the rankings. The links are just the shortest path from "I want to order" to "I have ordered."
The site itself runs on a static-hosting plan that costs less per year than a single case of SPT-1. There is no meaningful cost to keep it live. I write it because the industry needs it and nobody else was doing it.
Three small things.
The best way to reach me is by email. You can send tips, corrections, wholesaler spec sheets, or general feedback to editor at reviewingchristmaslights dot com. I try to answer within a few days — sometimes longer during the buying season when I'm in the middle of ranking runs.
I do not accept product samples. If you send them anyway, they go to a local church display and you don't get coverage in exchange.
I do not do phone interviews with wholesalers. If a wholesaler wants to discuss a review, put it in writing — I'll respond in writing.
I do not accept sponsored content. If you're a PR firm reading this, please stop pitching.
If you're new here, the three posts to read in order are:
Read those three and you'll know more about Christmas light wholesale economics than most of the people currently selling in the space.
If you'd rather skip the reading and just order: my top pick has been the same for four seasons. Christmas Light Supplier. Free same-day ship, locked pricing, no account required. That's the shortcut.
— The editor
Free same-day shipping. Locked prices. No account, no minimums.
ChristmasLightSupplier.com →