Usually, people just want what they grew up with, I hear that a lot — “My parents had this type of succah, that’s what I want.”
Rabbi Ezriel Munk is a partner at National Sukkah Outlet in Passaic, New Jersey.
All year! From Succos until we clean up the merchandise, close the books, figure out what we need for next year, it takes time. Some s’chach comes from Kenya, and their rainy season is April, May, and June, so we need our order in by November so they can cut it and dry it and pack it and get it on the boats, so it’s out of there and not getting wet. And come end of December, we need to order bamboo poles, bamboo mats, and succah parts for the next year already, because China closes down for a holiday January-February time. Then they come back to the factories and they’re producing in March, April, and May, and they ship in May — you hope! — so you get it four or five weeks later. We start selling sometime around the Three Weeks, depending how late Succos falls out.
We’re trying new things all the time, working with ideas back and forth; some work, some don’t. Two years ago, we developed the Fold ‘n Go, it’s on a spring and pops up when you open it, and it folds up so small and lightweight you can even carry it in one hand, it’s like those pop-up hampers. That’s been successful. Last year we had a sample for a blow-up succah, it came with a pump like you use for tires and it plugged into the cigarette lighter in your car. That didn’t go, it wasn’t practical.
The Easy-Lock succah doesn’t take much — it has interlocking bars that fit into each other, you don’t need any tools. It’s over 10 years old, and it’s pretty popular. And there’s the modular succah — an aluminum frame with fiberglass or wood filling in — and once you get the hang of it, it’s really not complicated, no drills and pieces and building doors.
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