“If you pay the same amount, you’re going to get less. There’s no question in my mind,” Zoldan said.
As the economy has reopened and started to recover from the pandemic, supply chains have struggled to keep up with demand, leading to shortages and congestion at ports. For the fireworks industry, which relies on shipments from China, the result has been a “very, very tight bottleneck for the industry,” Zoldan said.
Even without the additional pressures of a recovering economy, the fireworks industry already sat in a “secondary position” because fireworks are considered hazardous goods, according to Zoldan. Now, the industry is struggling with fewer shipments and more expensive containers.
“There’s not enough dock workers. There’s not enough capacity…there’s not enough truckers,” Zoldan said.
“It reduced the inventories not just for our company, but for the entire industry to the lowest levels on the consumer side that we’ve ever seen and created.”
For customers, all of this means fewer deals, lower inventory and higher prices. Historically, customers who came looking for fireworks in the days before July 4th could find goods in showrooms. This year though, things aren’t so promising.
“I do see shortages at the end. My advice is certainly to get there as early as possible,” Zoldan said.
— CNN Business’ Annie Hager contributed to this report
