“Our lights run on free sunshine. Our factory couldn’t afford the power bill.” — Why a 71-year-old Ohio woman is letting her family factory’s last Christmas lights go at a special price, before the machines stop for good.

At 5:30 in the evening, the parking lot behind Kovach Glow Works is already dark. Then, one after another, eight little figures along the front walk light up. Two snowmen. Two Santas. Two reindeer. Two Christmas trees.

Nobody flips a switch. They do it by themselves, the way they have done every winter evening since 2009.

Phyllis Kovach watches them from her office window. She is 71. Her father started this factory in 1979, in an old dairy building on the edge of Coshocton, a town of about 11,000 people in eastern Ohio. She has run it since 1999.

“I’ve seen them come on maybe ten thousand times. I still stop what I’m doing.”

The snowman her father built for a dark front walk

It started with Phyllis’s mother. Irene Kovach worked night shifts at the hospital. In the winter of 1978, the snow was so deep that she could not find the steps to her own front door in the dark. She slipped twice that January.

Her husband Joe was a tool maker. He went down to the basement, cut a snowman out of a sheet of plastic, put a light bulb inside and pushed it into the snow next to the walk. Irene came home that night and saw it from the street.

“By February, half the street wanted one. By the next Christmas, my father had quit his job.”

Eleven people, one long table and a lamp that never goes off

The factory is one long hall. It smells of warm plastic and coffee. Eleven people work at one long table. Lonnie Driscoll, the foreman, has been here for 31 years. Two of the women on the line started the same year Phyllis did.

At the end of the table stands what everybody calls the “sun table”: a row of bright lamps that never go off. Every set is charged under them, then carried into a dark back room and tested. Every figure has to light up before it gets packed.

One set of eight takes about forty minutes of hand work. Since 1979, around 410,000 sets have left the loading dock.

“If one little reindeer doesn’t light up, the whole set goes back. My father’s rule. Never broke it once.”

What 47 Christmases taught her about lighting a front walk

The set has not changed much in years. Phyllis says that is on purpose. Every part of it comes from a letter a customer once wrote.

• “The One-Panel Charge”: One small solar panel charges all eight lights. Six to eight hours of daylight give eight to ten hours of light. “People wrote us every year: there’s no outlet near my walk. So in 2009, we put the sun in them.”
• “The Dusk Switch”: The lights turn on by themselves when it gets dark and off again in the morning. “Nobody should have to go out in the snow to plug in a Christmas light.”
• “The Glowing Stem”: The little LED lights run all the way up the clear stake, not just in the figure. So the whole walk glows, right down to the ground. “You don’t trip over what you can see.”
• “The Snow Seal”: Every light is sealed against rain and snow. Eight light settings, from a soft steady glow to a gentle twinkle. “My mother liked them steady. The grandkids want them to twinkle. So we did both.”

The letter she keeps in her top drawer

In her top desk drawer, Phyllis keeps a letter from a woman in Indiana. It came in January 2019. The woman wrote that her two grandsons now run to the window every evening at half past five, just to watch the snowmen come on.

“That’s the whole job, right there. Two little boys at a window. My father would have framed it.”

The electric bill that ended 47 years

Kovach Glow Works did not run out of customers. It ran out of money to keep the lights on in its own hall.

In 2022, the factory’s electric bill was about $3,100 a month. Today it is $9,400. The plastic costs much more than it did. So does every truck that leaves the dock. Phyllis kept her price the same for nine years. This spring, the bank said no to another loan.

“I sat in the bank’s parking lot for an hour before I could drive home. Then I went back to work. There were orders to pack.”

The last shift is on December 19. In January, the building will be sold. There is nobody left in Coshocton who makes Christmas lights. 583 sets are left in the warehouse. There will never be another one.

Why she hung up on the liquidator

In October, a liquidation company called. They offered to buy the whole warehouse in one go, for a price Phyllis calls “dumpster money.” The lights would have ended up in a discount bin somewhere, or worse.

She said no. Instead, she is selling the last 583 sets herself, at a price just above what it costs her to make them. She could ask more. Everyone would understand. She won’t.

“My father never made a light to sit in a box. I want every one of them on somebody’s front walk this Christmas.”

Whoever orders one of the last sets is not only getting eight Christmas lights. They are getting the last thing Joe Kovach’s factory will ever make.

What people say about their Kovach lights

• ★★★★★

  “Put them in on a Sunday afternoon, no tools, no cords. At 5:30 they came on by themselves. My neighbor came over the same evening to ask where I got them.”

  Diane W., Zanesville, OH
• ★★★★★

  “Our walk is long and dark, and my husband doesn’t see well at night anymore. Now the whole path glows from the street to the steps. That alone was worth it.”

  Sharon P., Wheeling, WV
• ★★★★★

  “Bought a set for my mother and one for us. She calls me every night: ‘They’re on!’ We had a foot of snow last week and they kept right on going.”

  Karen M., Erie, PA

Three questions people ask before ordering

Where can I buy the Kovach lights?

Only through this page. The last sets are not sold on Amazon, Temu or in any store.

How long will they be available?

Only while supplies last. There are 583 sets left in the warehouse, and the factory closes for good on December 19. Once they are gone, there will be no more.

What if they’re not right for me?

You have 30 days to try them at home. If you are not happy, just send a short email and you will get your money back. No questions, no hassle.

More from people who light their walk with one

• ★★★★★

  “The grandkids love the twinkle setting. I like the steady one. We switch it depending on who is visiting.”

  Ron T., Mansfield, OH
• ★★★★★

  “I read about the factory closing and ordered two sets the same night. They came well packed, every single one lit up. Sad to think there won’t be any more.”

  Betty L., Fort Wayne, IN
• ★★★★★

  “They are smaller than the big blow-up decorations, and I am glad of it. They look sweet along the walk and nobody has to haul anything out of the garage.”

  Judy F., Lexington, KY