During the early months of the pandemic, fireworks trading company Grucci, which has operated from the United States for more than a century, saw demand for its Independence Day performances plummet at a rate that family not seen since the Great Depression.
The business performed about a dozen performances on July 4, 2020, a fraction of its normal operations as cities and towns, fearing Covid, decided against mass gatherings of people. People enter public parks to see red, white and blue peonies explode.
Instead, to keep busy, the 19th-century Italy-based Long-Island company focused its resources on a different kind of customer: the Ministry of Defense, which used hand grenades. Corporate simulator for US military training.
But this year, demand for fireworks has returned to pre-pandemic levels, according to Phil Grucci, the company’s chief executive officer, and leaders of other pyrotechnic costumes that stage professional shows. The Grucci Company booked more than 70 performances for the holiday – everywhere from Hackensack, NJ, to Hawaii – double last year’s number.
“It’s an important logistical undertaking,” said Grucci, whose family business has hosted fireworks at presidential inaugurations, the Olympic Games and fairs around the world.
And logistics this year has become even more complicated, with global shipping delays, rising costs and road shortages. Some cities have been forced to cancel Their official fireworks shows because of those challenges, along with labor shortages, or because of concerns about drought and wildfires.
But several major fireworks companies are still seeing booming business, including Pyro Spectaculars, which has hosted the Macy’s fireworks show in New York City for most of its history. . The company, which is based in California, has been supporting its capacity with about 400 fireworks shows for the July 4 holiday, following a 90% drop in that business in 2020.
Jim Souza, a fourth generation leader (and not related to composer John Philip Sousa, who Music is the mainstay of a fireworks show.)
For Grucci, which makes part of its inventory at plants in Virginia and upstate New York, the supply chain challenges are less acute than for other companies that ship most of the product. theirs from abroad. And Grucci has a safety net to rely on: a stockpile of fireworks in 2019 was kept in place for the first two years of the pandemic.
Fortunately, fireworks don’t reach their expiration date.
“You know the old saying, ‘Keep your dough dry’?” Grucci said. “As long as you keep the powder dry and the products stored properly, they should last indefinitely.”
In the days leading up to July 4, Grucci will deploy about 400 pyrotechnicians to host fireworks shows at parks, beaches and barges – some not far from Bellport, NY, the company’s headquarters. company and elsewhere, including Las Vegas.
The trucks are mostly loaded at what Grucci calls “undisclosed bunker locations” on Long Island and Virginia, where fireworks depots are covered with dirt to keep them cool. (“We don’t advertise where our explosives are stored,” he says.) Licensed technicians meet the trucks at their designated location, where they place the wiring according to a detailed scenario and load the fireworks into cylindrical fiberglass tubes. Each firework is marked with a number linked to an electronic firing system.
Before sunset, technicians contacted the local police and fire department to ensure that the fireworks area was cleared for all revelers. A medium-sized show will require a fallout zone 500 feet in diameter, but larger shows may require 2,000 feet in diameter.
About 50 of the fireworks artists are full-time Grucci employees, but most of the people who arrange the shows are part-timers with day jobs.
“For someone who can be an accountant, a mechanic or something like that, they become a performer in those 20 minutes,” says Grucci. “And when the show ends and the audience screams, there’s nothing like it.”
For Macy’s show on Monday, Souza’s company will stage the launch of more than 48,000 fireworks from five barges on the East River.
While the company’s holiday business has returned to 2019 levels, Souza said, it’s a new normal: the cost of shipping containers of fireworks from China has tripled. , Souza said, and due to delays, his company is ordering next year’s supply – several months earlier than before.
Competition for space on shipping containers has become fierce, and space for potentially dangerous goods is even more limited. The situation became so dire last fall that a number of fireworks companies, including Stephen Vitale’s company, Pyrotecnico, chartered their own vessels, each able to transport several hundred containers of fireworks. .
“The demand is strong,” said Vitale, whose company is based in Pennsylvania, USA. “People want to go out, they want to be together and go to fairs, festivals and events. community celebration. The demand has outstripped the capacity the industry actually has.”
By May, Grucci’s company had begun to refuse new customers requesting performances. Their schedules were booked with events ranging from a yacht club in the Hamptons the company has served for nearly 80 years to a large-scale celebration at Caesars Palace on the Vegas Strip.
Most of its fireworks shows are now computer-automated, Grucci says, although some are still electric rather than digital – starting with manually pressing buttons. rather than a click to start a preloaded thread. Technology has advanced significantly: Grucci recounts that his grandfather – Felix Grucci, Sr. – usually begins a fireworks display with a lighted cigar. They then started using a torch, before they were phased out around the turn of the century.
The process, and the expected suspense surrounding it, however, remains the same as his childhood.
“When the sunset crosses the horizon and it starts to turn dark, the heart starts beating wildly,” says Grucci. “And then came ‘3, 2, 1, go.'”
