Why customers across the globe are clamoring for this Utah light shop’s unique holiday bulbs

Ogden • When David Andora started Tru-Tone bulbs, it was only after waiting years for someone else to solve a problem he dealt with as a production designer, making props and putting together parade floats and other “themed environments.”

The now-51-year-old yearned for the warm glow of the incandescent bulbs of his youth to create a more vintage feel, but without the high cost and safety risk of those older lights.

“The LEDs that were coming out,” he explained, “have that very modern electronic appearance to them.”

This idea — LED lights that provide that vintage feel — “was not novel,” he said. “I think a lot of people were looking for someone to make that, and no one was.”

So he took matters into his own hands.

That was more than five years ago. Now he and his husband, Sean Hunt, run their light shop in Ogden. During the holiday seasons, they push out hundreds of orders every day that will decorate homes across the globe.

Hunt said the company has a big following in Utah, but their customer base outside the state is “hundreds of times more,” since most of their business is online. Tru-Tone had nearly 57,000 Instagram followers, as of Dec. 11, and Andora said they do no local advertising.

Last Wednesday afternoon, about thirty minutes before close and about two weeks before Christmas, the store’s meticulously decorated, midcentury modern showroom was empty, save for the displays of lights and a pink Christmas tree.

But just beyond, the warehouse was buzzing, where about a half-dozen employees rushed to pluck products from shelves and pack them up for delivery.

“We’ve never had as many orders as we’ve had this year,” Andora said. “By far.”

As of Thursday, their website reported shipping delays of up to nine days. But if you walk into their showroom, you can leave with a box (once staff types your order into an iPad disguised as an aged clipboard.)

What are Tru-Tone bulbs?

Prospective customers can choose from three bulb sizes and nine colors — sold in monochromatic sets or in pre-mixed blends. There’s also classic warm white lights in transparent glass they call “Candleglow.” And they sell varieties of light strings, including red-and-green braided cords for Christmas.

For those who don’t want the extra thought of pairing bulbs with string, they sell pre-made sets too. There’s the classic mix of red, white, green, orange and blue, for instance, but for Halloween, they sell orange-and-purple varieties, and so on.

In retrospect, creating Andora’s coveted incandescent-esque bulbs was a Herculean undertaking, perhaps more Icarian, he concedes. Because, it turns out, making new things look like old things is not easy.

“Essentially, without getting super technical on all this, the few manufacturers that are making glass light bulbs in the world, [they] were looking at these and saying, ‘Why? Why do you want these? They’re harder to make, they’re more expensive, and they don’t look as nice."

Andora said he still finds himself having to explain their business model to manufacturers: “This is a nostalgic thing. That is the only reason we’re in business, is to produce these (lights) that replicate this style.”

His muse for the company’s branding was the red boxes of 1960s Christmas lights he found in his grandparent’s storage, he explains, pulling them out of a filing cabinet in the warehouse. But to get that vintage feel, Andora said he also needed to design the packaging to both look worn with age and copy the lack of refinement in older printers.

Most customers get the intent, he said, but sometimes it leads to funny misunderstandings.

“We occasionally get a customer that says, ‘Hey, my package looks like it was in a flood,’...,” he said. “I have to explain to them that was intentional.”

Even the C7 bulbs (a popular, smaller-sized light, used mostly indoors) were handcrafted.

Modern versions of that candelabra bulb are pointier than the bulbs of yore. Andora didn’t know that when he started Tru-Tone, and those first light strings — which he keeps in the filing cabinet next to his grandparent’s old lights — feature that more modern shape.

When he fixed that, he also updated the company’s logo — a C7 bulb — to match.

Why Utah?

Andora started the company with Hunt in Andora’s mom’s basement in northern Michigan. The couple moved in with her in 2019 as she was considering downsizing. This was, of course, just before the COVID-19 pandemic, which grounded them for a while.

The business’s early efforts came together in Andora’s mom’s craft room, right outside of the couple’s living space and, Andora recalled, the laundry room.

“It was really quaint compared to what we see here,” he said, standing in their Ogden warehouse between rows of forest-green metal shelves, stacked high with cardboard boxes of lights and string.

In spring 2023, they moved to Utah, lured by the mountains and the plentiful order-fulfillment companies that ship products for the state’s large direct selling, or multilevel marketing, industry. Plus, Hunt graduated from Weber State University. The shop, at 466 26th Street, opened that summer.

Andora said his small staff has been shipping out about 600 orders on business days this holiday season. On a slow day, they’ll send out around 400. They’re selling about 1,000 items a week, far more than they can get out in day, Hunt said.

Andora would like — and expects — to see more foot traffic at their store in the future.

Recently, he said, online spaces have become more negative and anxiety-inducing. So he doesn’t like that their business is predicated on success online.

Additionally, he said, the proliferation of artificial intelligence has made users more distrustful of, and less enchanted with, the content they see. Tru-Tone, he said, is often accused of using artificial intelligence to make its marketing materials. That’s not true, Andora said, explaining that he and Hunt are both artists and know a lot of other artists.

“I think some people do notice the difference, but I think largely, people don’t notice the difference,” Andora said about AI-produced content, “and I worry that, not just for our business but the culture at large, the overexposure to what appears to be highly produced marketing materials will lessen the impact of all of it.”

Right now, the business is succeeding largely because of their marketing, but will that always be true?

To reduce that risk, he said their brick-and-mortar store, as well as selling their products in shops locally, will be key.

He thinks there’s a market for it. Their security cameras already catch people doing photoshoots outside the store, perhaps on their way to or from Ogden’s historic 25th Street and its iconic Christmas Village about a block away.

For now, though, Andora, Hunt and their staff are just trying to get through the holidays and the beginning of their slower season.

His advice — perhaps wish — for customers? Order early next year.

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