It took four tries, but Stephanie Masteller of Coon Rapids finally found the ultimate in Paul Claas' Premier Christmas tree stand.
Her family had tried tree stands with harnesses and strings to make their 10-foot trees stand straight and tall, but Masteller wasn't convinced. So she cut out Claas' ad from a religious magazine and held onto it.
And when the family dog grazed the tree two years ago, eventually toppling it, Masteller decided it was time to try the "premier" stand, even with its $150 price.
"First, I made sure that we were committed to buying live trees," she said. "Then we decided it was worth it if it was the last one we'd buy."
Claas, from DeForest, Wis., has been tinkering with and manufacturing versions of his Christmas tree stand for nearly 20 years. The longtime mechanic and repair man started with a stand that required the user to drill a hole in the bottom of the trunk.
When that put off most buyers, Claas retrenched and designed the current model that uses jaws to tighten around the stump and three levers to tilt the tree forward and backward and right and left.
"There's no more fiddling with the four screws of the standard stand, tightening one and loosening another till you say 'good enough,' " he said.
He is disappointed that he hasn't sold more than 500 stands, but he knows it's partly because of the price and his refusal to compromise. He turned down an offer to make it for less in China after he was sent a model that broke in shipment. "That was the end of China," he said.