Fireworks demand sky high this year

Buffalo, NY (WBEN) With America celebrating its 250th birthday this year, those selling and setting off fireworks say demand has been skyrocketing.

"There has been a tremendous uptick in demand," says Bruce Zoldan of Phantom Fireworks., "People are planning for big parties, neighborhood parties, family parties, and from what we're hearing from our customers is they're picking one day in the weekend, either the Friday, Saturday, or Sunday, to go to a public display, and they're having another day where they're planning their neighborhood or family backyard picnic, and our sales have been up significantly.". He says since March, the numbers are up at least 20 to 25% in every showroom, and expects more between now and July 4th.

Zoldan says he's been preparing for this one for a while. "We had planned five years ago that we knew that the 250th birthday, and especially that it falls on the best day of the week for the Fourth of July, Saturday, that this would be a really big high demand, so we planned early to bring as much as we could in," says Zoldan, and was able to get 95 percent of what he ordered.

For Skylighters of WNY's Matt Shaw, demand for his displays are "out of control." He says he's had a whole year of planning, bringing in lots more product this year, knowing that budgets have increased. "People who have done fireworks in many years have brought back their fireworks show. I would say probably double the amount of fireworks will be shot this year than previous years."

He says there's always a challenge when buying fireworks from overseas,. "We have great working relationships with several manufacturers, and we're a pretty large importer, so we have some great relationships over there, so challenging with shipping and there's always some kind of logistics that we have to figure out, but you know, we have all our inventory on hand, and we're ready for an extremely busy season," adds Shaw.

But next year could be more challenging to find fireworks. Zoldan that's because of what happened in China. "We're fortunate that we were able to get 95% of what we ordered in before last month, because there was a large fireworks accident in China about three weeks ago, where a number of people, 37 people, I believe, were killed, and the government shut down the Hunan province firework production, which most fireworks are made, and they say it won't reopen probably until the fall if they meet certain required safety requirements, so there are no fireworks being manufactured in China right now. Whatever is here in our country is here, and we're hoping that sometime in the fall that production will start again, and that'll mean there'll be a definite shortage for next year's Fourth of July," says Zoldan.