Explosive Gains Being Made in the Fireworks Industry : Holiday: The American Pyrotechnics Assn. estimates sales have more than tripled from 1980 to 1993, from about $75 million to around $250 million.
Booming business and skyrocketing sales can best describe--you guessed it--the state of the fireworks industry.
Many of the fireworks exhibitors that enliven the nation’s skies with an explosion of sound and color report steady sales gains over the past two decades. Even purveyors of common fireworks say business has been brisk.
The American Pyrotechnics Assn. estimates industrywide sales--which include everything from 15-cent smoke bombs to slick aerial displays--have more than tripled from 1980 to 1993, from about $75 million to around $250 million.
“There’s been a real surge in interest ever since the ’76 Bicentennial celebration,” said John Conkling, executive director of the pyrotechnics association. “Before then . . . some thought it was not too cool to celebrate the Fourth of July.”
This summer, millions of Americans will jam parks and ball fields across the country to “ooh” and “aah” at thousands of fireworks displays. Countless more will attempt a noisy show of their own, legal or otherwise.
Zambelli Internationale Fireworks, among the largest of the handful of family-run companies that dominate the industry, said about a third of its business comes around Independence Day. This year, the company has been commissioned to do 1,300 holiday displays, including programs in Detroit, Pittsburgh, Miami Beach and Louisville. Zambelli also was asked to represent the United States in D-day celebrations.
Another large exhibitor, Fireworks By Grucci Inc., expects do nearly half its business around the coming holiday weekend, putting on roughly 90 displays in places like Philadelphia, Boston, Omaha and Pearl Harbor.
Industry experts say more local governments and businesses are budgeting for fireworks, and many more are organizing public displays beyond July 4.
“I’d say the industry is going to grow even more,” said George (Boom Boom) Zambelli Sr., who heads Zambelli Internationale. “There’s no form of entertainment that will draw more people than fireworks.
“If you have fireworks in conjunction with a concert or a ball game, it will have greater appeal.”
Fireworks shows cost anywhere from $8,000 for a 15-minute, manually fired display to nearly $1 million for a 30-minute electronically fired, musically choreographed extravaganza. The average cost per town runs $17,000; the average show, 20 minutes.
“In the late ‘60s and early ‘70s, the budgets were so small. They have not been greatly enhanced, but they are bigger, and that has helped (the industry) mature,” said Philip Butler, a Grucci spokesman.
Today’s fireworks displays have come a long way since the Chinese packed saltpeter, sulfur and charcoal into bamboo tubes 2,000 years ago. Italian explorer Marco Polo discovered them in China and introduced them to the Western world in the 1300s.
China remains the world’s largest fireworks exporter, producing nearly half the display fireworks and three-quarters of the street fireworks sold in the United States. Many larger exhibitors, though, still produce some of their own. (Fireworks manufacturing in this country dates back to before the Revolutionary War, when gunpowder was packed in rockets and firecracker-type devices.)
While the principle remains the same, technological advances have made fireworks displays faster-paced and more brilliant, often punctuated with musical accompaniments and dazzling grand finales.
“This reflects society,” said Conkling. “We were a slower-paced nation 30 years ago (and) . . . displays used to last more than an hour then.
“Today we’re competing with MTV and rock videos. Attention spans are shorter. You try to keep fireworks up to date with the rest of the entertainment industry.”
Nearly all of the biggest displays are shot electronically, as opposed to manually, and some shows are choreographed with the help of a computer.
Grucci, for instance, has developed a software program that coordinates music and fireworks.
More technological advances are expected. At the pyrotechnics association’s annual meeting last fall, Walt Disney Imagineering dazzled some in the industry by presenting its own innovation--an air-powered, multi-barreled, computer-controlled and chip-activated firing system.
