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Faced with the darkest Fourth of July in ages — maybe as far back as 1776 — Americans are buying record amounts of fireworks while the show segment of the industry hits the rocks.
“It’s like a tale of two cities,” said Julie Heckman, executive director of the American Pyrotechnics Association. “Backyard consumer fireworks sales are off the hook while the professional display side of the industry is fighting for survival.”
Coronavirus concerns have called off most Hampton Roads shows, along with 80 percent of the 16,000 Independence Day extravaganzas that typically light up the nation’s night sky, drawing masses of upturned faces.
July Fourth generates as much as 75% of the money display companies make all year, according to the trade association. Roughly 150 small family businesses fill the niche, and months of lockdown have already worn holes in their pockets. No sporting events, fairs, festivals or outdoor concerts.
“It’s a horrible year for us,” said William Bulifant, owner of Petersburg-based Dominion Fireworks, whose clients include localities like Virginia Beach and Yorktown as well as football games at Old Dominion and Hampton universities, baseball games at Harbor Park and horse races at Colonial Downs.
Last year, Bulifant collected $75,000 from Virginia Beach alone for putting on the city’s Oceanfront and Mount Trashmore shows.
“No one could have imagined what’s happened this year,” Bulifant said. “Everything canceled? It’s like a sci-fi movie.”
But as the pandemic guts one sector, it’s feeding another: retail, where the pent-up public is flocking to compensate.
Sales of backyard fireworks have climbed for decades, although they’ve been outlawed in many places, including most of Hampton Roads. This year is on pace to beat even last year’s $1 billion record.
“Excuse the pun but sales are booming,” said Sherri Simmons, spokeswoman for TNT Fireworks, the country’s largest distributor of consumer fireworks.
TNT’s tents and stands have popped up in the area over the past few weeks, ringing the region from localities that have not layered additional restrictions on top of the statewide ban on exploding or flying consumer fireworks. In Gloucester and Poquoson, roadside operations are stocked with festive-looking tables, piled high with colorful fountains, whirligigs, snappers, pinwheels, Pharoah’s serpents and sparklers.
Simmons said it’s too soon to tally receipts, but “traffic has been up, with people waiting in line to buy.”
It helps that this year’s holiday falls on a Saturday, which is always good for business. The absence of public displays is adding fuel.
“So many customers have told me they can’t imagine an Independence Day with no fireworks,” said Amanda Pitts, who along with her fiancé, Austin Firth, operates an independent stand in Poquoson.
Complaints have skyrocketed along with sales though, which started early when a bored-at-home population went online or sought outlying year-round stores, then fired up purchases at home, where they’re illegal. From New York to California, cities have been rattled by booms, which have sometimes been mistaken for gunfire in the thick of recent social unrest.
In Chesapeake, police logged 102 fireworks complaint calls from May 24 to June 24. The same period last year had just 39. In Virginia Beach, complaints were up 72% — from 71 calls to 250.
People around the world have a fondness for fireworks, with origins in China that go back 2,000 years. But Americans feel a special pull. Fireworks became a symbol of patriotism with the first Independence Day display in Philadelphia in 1777.
Heckman, with the trade group, thinks they’ve been part of every July Fourth since, with the possible exception of the World War years, when fireworks manufacturing came to a halt in the U.S. so the industry could make explosives for the military.
Most of today’s supply comes from China, though Pitts and Firth in Poquoson try to buy American-made. Pitts represents the multi-generational nature of the industry. Now 26, she’s been selling fireworks since she was 8, helping her grandmother, who started the business in 1974.
Each season requires about $5,000 for inventory — paid in advance — plus permits, inspections and taxes.
Inside Business
“We get a lot regulars — customers I’ve been seeing for years ,” Pitts said. “But some people are driving all the way here from Virginia Beach. I don’t think we’ll have anything left after the Fourth.”
The opposite is true for those like Bulifant.
He’ll have to sit on his inventory — also paid for in advance — for who knows how long while his 74 part-time employees are out of work. His insurance bill will keep coming. So will the cost of monitoring and securing thousands of large-caliber aerial shells, designed to thunder into the heavens and burst to oohs and ahhs. They’re powerful enough to require storage in military-grade magazines.
“We just have to try to adapt and keep moving forward,” Bulifant said.
The trade association is asking Congress for special help in the next stimulus package.
“No one thinks about this industry except one day a year — the Fourth of July,” Heckman said. “But it’s very unique and specialized. They need a lifeline to make sure they’re still here when all this is over.”
Joanne Kimberlin, 757-446-2338, joanne.kimberlin@pilotonline.com