Fireworks shortage: Early birds get the boom as supply chains struggle to match demand

“Across the board it’s going to be thin,” Jake’s Fireworks employee Ron Stokes said Monday. “We’ve recommended our customers come in early, so we’ve been extremely busy today.”

Word has spread like wildfire among shoppers. Stokes said Monday that he’d seen one couple fill their cart to the brim with the aesthetic explosives. Another couple made two separate trips to the store’s West Skelly Drive location in the same day.

Customers in search of a specific firework experienced the frustration of the national shortage firsthand. A running list of names and contact information was drawn on a whiteboard in the West Skelly Drive store in case those items come in, Stokes said.

The shortage has been driven largely by a trans-Pacific chain of events, Jake’s Fireworks President Mick Marietta said in the company’s 2021 virtual shootoff.

The “all-time high” demand for fireworks in 2021 has led to several important ports, including Shanghai and Long Beach, California, being backed up for extended periods. An extended Chinese New Year celebration also limited the number of days factories were open for production.

Once products do reach American shores, timely arrival still isn’t guaranteed. Some orders that were placed as far back as January and February have yet to arrive at TNT Fireworks on West Skelly, said Maggie Guynes, the location’s store manager.

“We began doing these orders very early in the year, and at this point … it’s more a guarantee that they won’t arrive (for this holiday season),” Guynes said. “Everyone went into this season knowing that was a possibility. A lot of our distributors have tried to help out and kind of prepare us for that.”

While the initial amount of products available leading into the season was roughly normal, the shortage’s impact will be apparent once the initial buying wave is over. No restock shipments are expected to hit shelves at the West Skelly TNT before July 4.

“We expect it to get really bare in the next few days,” Guynes said.

The shipping and production issues have led to some price jumps in many shops, but Jake’s Fireworks store manager Brent McClure said he hasn’t seen the increases he expected at the West Skelly location.

“Some things have gone up, but not really as much as what I had expected, and some things haven’t gone up at all,” McClure said. “I don’t think it’s as bad as we expected it might be. … As far as Jake’s, I feel comfortable to say we’re probably going to have enough supplies at our tents and buildings.”

TNT has also avoided major prices increase, Guynes said, but the shortage is felt in other ways.

“Our change (due to the shortage) is more seen in giving away less free items,” Guynes said. “We used to be able to throw in some free fireworks when people made larger purchases, but now we haven’t been able to do that as much.”

It would be difficult to say how big of a dent, if any, the shortage will make in fireworks sellers’ budgets until the holiday has past, Guynes said.

Navigating the shortage has led shoppers to change their buying habits. Not only are more customers showing up, but they are buying more products at once, said Rick Doyle, owner of Doyle’s Fusion Fireworks. Doyle owns two locations, one near 101 Coonrod Drive in Mannford, between the Pizza Hut and 51 Grill, and the other at 38574 W. Oklahoma 51.

The only way people can ensure they get what they need is to show up early and buy everything they’ll need rather than shopping on different days as usual.

“We’ve had people showing up at the tents as soon as we open knowing there’s a shortage,” Doyle said. “More customers are trying to get everything they need because they’re afraid it’ll be out later.”

The scarcity has been unlike any he’s seen in over a decade of selling fireworks, Doyle said.

“I was at two wholesale places yesterday, and I’ve been doing this for 16 years — I’ve never seen them that empty,” Doyle said.

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