About us
Locally owned. Nationally backed.
A Punta Gorda business with a national system behind it, which in practice means local accountability, and product and training that a one-truck operation cannot match.
Tropical Twinkle is a locally owned and operated franchise of Christmas Decor, the national holiday-lighting brand that has been doing this since 1986. We serve Charlotte and Lee County from a warehouse on Taylor Road in Punta Gorda.
The franchise arrangement matters more than it sounds. It means commercial-grade product you cannot buy retail, installation methods refined across hundreds of markets, and design training that goes well beyond hanging a strand of lights. What it does not mean is a call center. When you call us, you get us.
The people behind it
Clay and Tina Putnam
Tropical Twinkle is owned by Clay and Tina Putnam, who have been designing and installing Christmas Decor displays since 2016, just not in Florida. Their first franchise, Christmas Decor by ServiScape, works out of Michigan City, Indiana, and was named Christmas Decor's Midwestern Franchise of the Year for 2024. Punta Gorda is their second.
Clay came to holiday lighting from turf. He studied agronomy at Ohio State and spent his early career as a golf course superintendent before joining ServiScape in the 1990s, returning later as a partner and eventually buying the company outright. Course maintenance is an unglamorous education in the thing this business actually turns on: showing up on a schedule, in weather, year after year, on a property where anything short of immaculate gets noticed by everyone who walks it.
Tina leads the design side, which Clay will tell you plainly is not his strength. She has run the Christmas Decor division since it began, and the split has held for ten seasons: she decides what a property should look like, he makes sure the crew and the calendar deliver it.
What that means for a homeowner here is that the newest Christmas light company in Charlotte County is not a new company. The design training, the commercial-grade product, the install and takedown methods, and the habit of answering the phone in December all arrived in Punta Gorda fully formed.
“…listening, following through, and leaving the property in better shape.”
How we work
Four things we will not budge on.
We answer the phone in December
That is not a slogan, it is the whole difference. The busiest month is exactly when most companies stop picking up, and it is when you actually need us.
We do not sell you lights
The product stays ours. That keeps our incentives pointed at the result on your house rather than at moving inventory.
We quote a fixed price
A written number after seeing the property, not a range that firms up on install day.
We are local
You will see us shopping at Publix.
Say hello
Come and meet the people who will be on your roof.
The design consult is as much about you deciding whether you trust us as it is about the lighting.