The holidays would be amiss without the festive lights that adorn popular shopping districts like the Country Club Plaza or a Christmas drive-thru’s twinkling displays—yet we rarely think twice about the manufacturers that make the magic happen.
America’s No. 1 commercial-grade holiday lighting provider, Creative Displays, was born out of General Electric employee George Purucker’s Kansas City garage in 1959. Initially from Philadelphia, Purucker moved to KC and worked as a lamp specialist until he started his own display business.
Purucker was inspired by the festive glitz of London’s West End during a holiday trip abroad—particularly the sparkling crowns suspended above the city’s Regent Street shopping district. Around the same time, retail centers were popping up throughout the Kansas City area, and Purucker believed a European-style approach to the holidays would attract shoppers to locations like Ward Parkway Shopping Center and the Country Club Plaza. Sure enough, his idea paid off, and Purucker earned contracts for several J.C. Nichols developments and neighboring cities, where he spearheaded grand outdoor displays.
Purucker’s daughter, Ann, helped with the family business as well. On many occasions after school, Ann would return to her Prairie Village home and measure wire, install lightbulb sockets and hand-make individual streamers that would attach to illuminated crowns just like the ones her father saw in England. The crowns were first suspended above downtown Kansas City streets just after Thanksgiving in 1962. The crowns were reinstalled every Christmas season from then on until 1976, when the city’s landscape began to change shape and retail centers shifted to increasingly popular suburban malls. Nonetheless, Creative Displays continued working with various cities in the area and remained a family business until 1984, when it was sold to the first of several different owners. Now a worldwide company, Creative Displays celebrated its 65th anniversary this year.
Current owner Angela Primavera purchased Creative Displays in 2017 after a long career of working and traveling globally for a large corporation. “I was able to use a lot of my skill set on sourcing, product innovation and design—in ways that could take the company to the next level,” Primavera says. “But I also thought it was beautiful that my work surrounded the holidays—something happy and traditional and that I could bring to my family as well.”
Today, Primavera finds joy in knowing that her customers are excited about the products they receive, as each of the company’s innovative displays are continuously produced with the highest quality materials—think super-thick copper wiring and a corrosion-resistant powder coating—which means the displays last for years, she says.
Creative Displays isn’t limited to creating holiday displays in cities like Olathe, Branson, Lenexa and Lawrence. They have upcoming projects at attractions like the Kansas City Zoo, Union Station’s Giving Machines, Aeropostale and the 2024 Christmas comedy film, Oh. What. Fun. starring Michelle Pfeiffer, Felicity Jones and other A-listers. The film’s production company called Creative Displays in search of a colossal bow to wrap around a building, which Creative Displays made and shipped out in June. Other recent displays include an Eiffel Tower replica seen at this year’s Olympic pre-trials, a lights drive-thru in New York and a large Christmas tree shipped to Guam.
While the lights manufacturer is based in the Kansas City metro, its products are shipped globally for most any holiday, including Valentine’s Day, Easter, Halloween and the Fourth of July, Primavera says.
In addition to their website’s large selection of displays, which includes an animated volcano and an 8-foot-tall cowboy with a lasso, they frequently work with clients to create custom pieces. If lights are involved, the sky’s the limit.
“I think the customer service aspect is what’s most rewarding for our team,” Primavera says. “Over the next 20 years, we just hope to continue taking care of our customers and working on some amazing projects.”
