Every holiday has its own set of traditions that create memories and evoke fondness through the years. For Independence Day, that means fireworks.
“Meeting all the people that come out and seeing how excited the kids are is pretty satisfying,” said Doug Schneider, who co-owns Torpedo Joe’s Fireworks in Little Rock with his brother and sister. “The kids walk in, and you see how big their eyes get. They just can’t believe how many fireworks are in the store. The parents are just like kids, some of them. It’s just great seeing the families come out and making that tradition.”
Fireworks are one of those things everyone has experienced from varying degrees of proximity. Almost nobody can say they have never seen at least one pyrotechnic display, even if it was just on television, as they are increasingly used during sporting events, New Year’s Eve and other non-July 4 occasions.
The number of people who have indulged in consumer-grade fireworks is undeniably smaller but still represents a wide swath of the American population. Those who did will never forget the thrill of lighting Black Cats all day or sending bottle rockets whistling skyward. When darkness fell, American neighborhoods from Cape Cod to Capistrano echoed with the sound of firecrackers, glittering with sparks and sparklers.
Schneider, and entrepreneurs like him, feed those family and neighborhood traditions through a highly orchestrated and impeccably timed business operation. Sixteen years ago, Torpedo Joe’s was born as a sideline to the family’s landscaping business under a cheap tent. Today it occupies its own 4,800-square-foot air-conditioned building that is not only more secure but a lot more comfortable for clients and staff alike.
“My brother-in-law and my brother actually started the business, and after a couple of years that the business was kind of growing a little bit,” Schneider said. “My brother and his wife were having a baby. The due date was, like, June 26, and they approached my wife, Brooke, and I and wanted to know if we wanted to come on board. My first question was, ‘How many weekends do I have to miss at the lake for this?’”
The store’s original structure was a building the family used to house their man toys, which were a pain to move in and out every year. It was air-conditioned, however, which more than made up for the inconvenience. It also appealed to customers so much that four years ago, the owners built a dedicated building just for the fireworks.
Aside from the fact that everything in inventory is an explosive, Torpedo Joe’s operates much like any other retail outlet. As in other industries, each year provides new models and new products to pore over, as well as reordering best sellers as determined by sales tracking. Many operations order through distributors, although this year, the business dipped its toe into buying direct from China, where the vast percentage of fireworks sold in the U.S. are manufactured, another testament to how the store has grown.
“This year is the first year we have ordered directly from China. We just ordered a shipping container of two specific brands,” he said. “You get bigger discounts on that, and so you can keep the price point a little bit lower when you order a container. It’ll probably take us into next year or at least into the new year with some of that stuff.”
Schneider said he is looking for an unprecedented year given America’s 250th birthday. If that is true, then that is saying something in the U.S., where fireworks consumption has doubled in the last 25 years, according to the annual report of The American Fireworks Standards Laboratory, growing 99.5 percent from 161.6 million pounds in 2001 to 322.4 million pounds in 2025, a growth rate of about 6.8 million pounds per year. Even with those gaudy numbers, Schneider said manufacturers expect a huge bump in 2026.
“The fireworks industry, all the suppliers, started advertising America250 two years ago, gearing up for it,” he said. “What we have this year is a lot of red-white-and-blue stuff. We’re definitely going to have, I think, bigger sales this year. I think there are going to be a lot of people who normally may not shoot fireworks that might think, ‘Hey, let’s go get some this year to celebrate the 250th.’ We’ve ordered more stuff and actually opened earlier than in past years. It was pretty shocking just how many people have come in already, getting ready for it.”
That aside, encroaching regulations that vary state to state on what could be sold where and when remain a consistent challenge in the industry, Schneider said. Yet while the official window for July 4 sales is short, Schneider said new opportunities have opened up that takes a little of the seasonality out of things.
“Gender-reveal fireworks have become so popular. We get several calls a week for this gender-reveal stuff, which blows my mind. We sell a lot of wedding sparklers throughout the year. That’s become bigger than throwing rice at people these days,” he said. “Then New Year’s Eve, and of course, the Fourth of July, but another big holiday for us is Diwali, which is the Festival of Light in the Indian community. That falls around the end of October, first of November. We have started kind of catering to that market, and it’s been great.
“It’s kind of funny; when we were kids, we worked most of the time, so we might have gotten a few bottle rockets with our friends, just some small stuff like that. The stuff that we sell now, I would never have imagined I would be in a business like this. It’s just been a really good family business where we get to spend time together out there. It’s been really fun.”
