Stalling sales sap sizzle for fireworks sellers

With the fuse running short on Independence Day planning time, operators of local fireworks stands are hopeful a last-minute customer boom will prevent holiday fund-raising results from being a dud.

Whether it is the recession or some other factor, stand operators in the Las Vegas Valley say early sales are slower than normal and they need demand to pick up at the last minute to match previous years' profits.

There's some justification for optimism -- fireworks sales tend to pop at the last minute and with the holiday falling on a weekend, plenty of potential customers will be off work today and have time to buy.

Still, early sales at some stands are so far below what they were in previous years, even a major surge won't make up all the lost ground.

"This year is very slow," said Jennifer Sloane, who was supervising a stand this week near Ann Road and Camino Eldorado, in the parking lot of a Smith's shopping center.

Sloane, a cheerleading coach at Mojave High School in North Las Vegas, was working the stand with several cheerleaders.

Selling legal fireworks is the fundraising event of the year for the cheer team and many other local nonprofit groups. Wholesalers provide stands and fireworks to the groups, which sell them on consignment and share in the proceeds.

Sloane says the Mojave cheer team moved about $30,000 in inventory last year. This year they only stocked about $17,000 worth.

"Everyone is watching their money," she said.

Dave Bradshaw is the wholesaler who provides fireworks to Mojave and hundreds of other stands in Clark County under the Phantom Fireworks name.

The stands are allowed to operate in the county during a one-week window that ends on July 4, provided they sell only legal, "safe and sane" fireworks.

More elaborate fireworks are available in bordering Nye County and at a store at the Moapa Paiute Travel Plaza, a tribally run business near Interstate 15 at the exit to Valley of Fire State Park.

But the bigger fireworks, such as exploding M-80s and bottle rockets, are illegal to detonate in Clark County.

Bradshaw works from a space in North Las Vegas that he said is normally "a zoo" about this time each year.

On top of a rough economy, the cost of fireworks is higher this year, Bradshaw said. He said one of the two major companies that moves fireworks across the ocean from China to the United States went out of business, driving up shipping costs.

"Right now, sales are a little slow, but they're picking up," he says.

Bradshaw estimates as much of 80 percent of the action won't happen until the holiday.

In the meantime stand operators are putting in long hours -- the Mojave group is working 6 a.m. to 10 p.m. -- and hoping for the best.

"The profits vary like the wind," Bradshaw says. "The more effort the group puts into it the more money they make."

The Mojave stand was slow Wednesday evening around 8 p.m. when Faith Johnson of North Las Vegas rolled up.

Johnson, a stay-at-home mom, says with two teens and a toddler at home, spending some money on fireworks is affordable holiday entertainment.

"What we do is just small and family-oriented," said Johnson, who spent $63. "We just stay close to home."

A few miles away three more stands at Craig Road and Simmons Street were, in the words of one stand supervisor, "slow, very slow."

On one corner Ylonda Dickerson had a stand in a gasoline station parking lot to raise money for Valley View Community Cares, a group providing assistance to "extremely at-risk" kids and families.

Dickerson says the group helps families with everything from navigating the court system to providing food or clothes. The group has been around nine years and chose to do a fireworks stand because "this is the most profitable fund raiser you can do," she said.

By Wednesday evening, Dickerson said there had been about 12 customers for the day.

The group also presold $5 discount tickets, which she hopes will pay off the final two days of selling.

Across Simmons Street in the parking lot of Food 4 Less, Ron Washington was alone in a stand raising money for Church of God in Christ, a Pentecostal denomination with organizational bases in Memphis, Tenn., and Los Angeles.

Washington said sales so far were "almost nothing" and didn't have a reason other than it was "probably the economy."

The unemployment rate in the Las Vegas area is above 11 percent, and some consumers who are working are getting fewer hours and less pay.

As for whether the church was expecting much of a boost from this year's fireworks sales, Washington echoed the sentiments of many stand operators around the valley.

"We don't know," he said. "Could be a last-minute rush."

Contact reporter Benjamin Spillman at bspillman@reviewjournal.com or 702-477-3861.