YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio – A sign above the loading docks at Phantom Fireworks warehouse lists shipment destinations from Cheyenne, Wyo., to Daytona, Fla., and places between.
Phantom is in the midst of its busy July 4 season, which is expected to be extra busy this year as the nation marks its 250th anniversary.
Forklifts buzz around the 800,000-square-foot Larchmont Avenue warehouse in Warren, picking up pallets stacked with fireworks like the Uncle Sam Assortment, Phantom Happy Rockets and ’Neath the Red, White and Blue. Forklift operators move the items from the warehouse floor into the tractor-trailers for transport to their destinations.
Bruce Zoldan, CEO and founder, says the family-owned Youngstown company expects sales to increase this year as families, neighbors and organizations plan their America semiquincentennial celebrations.
“We all have different guesstimates,” he says. “I’m probably on the higher side.”
Alan Zoldan, Bruce’s brother and Phantom’s executive vice president, is aiming high.
“I’m thinking double digit – 20 to 30% – but if we’re 10, I’m still going to be thrilled,” he says.
Business Growth
July 4 falling on a Saturday also boosts projections. And the company has been on a steady incline.
“We’ve been growing in numbers every year, probably for the last 30 years,” Bruce Zoldan says. “It starts with the number of showrooms that we have.”
In the late 1970s, the company operated one showroom, which was in southern Mahoning County. It’s up to more than 100.
“Our mission always, when we build a new showroom, is to be in an area where there’s new population,” Bruce Zoldan says.
The idea is to gain new customers to increase the volume annually. The newest showroom was slated to open this month in Geneva, Ohio.
“Our biggest growth year was Covid,” Bruce Zoldan says. “No one was traveling or out in crowds. If you did go out, you were outside primarily. You weren’t going inside, where possibly the virus was spreading, and nobody could do anything except to have a backyard picnic, and they were buying fireworks…”
People received federal stimulus checks and many spent the money on fireworks, Bruce Zoldan says.
“Our business more than doubled in 2020,” he adds. “I was looking at our numbers and we doubled our business… We’re talking that year, 100-plus million increase over the previous year.”
The company sold out for the first time that year and sales have never gone backwards year over year since, although last year was flat across the industry compared to 2024.
“People that bought fireworks, maybe for the first time during Covid, enjoyed it so much they had some family event or neighborhood event outside, and they said, ‘let’s do it again next year,’” the CEO says.
Since the end of the Covid era, the fireworks’ retail selling season has condensed, Alan Zoldan says.
“We do about as good as anybody because we do catalogs and flyers that other companies really don’t do,” he explains.
Most retail fireworks businesses don’t generate a lot of retail sales until June 24. “We’ve already done a decent percentage of our sales compared with everybody else, but those last 10 days, and then specifically the last four or five of those days, really tell the story of the season,” Alan Zoldan says. “So it’s very, very compact and very, very condensed, which makes predicting something like this a little bit ambiguous.”
Next year will be another whirlwind as Phantom marks its own 50th anniversary. The company started as BJ Alan Fireworks in 1977. The name denotes the names of the three Zoldan brothers: Bruce, Jeff and Alan. Jeff also works at the company occasionally.
Next Generation
Bruce Zoldan’s sons, Ron and Alex, each serve as company vice presidents.
“I grew up working in the business, not necessarily knowing at least personally, that I would be involved later in life,” Ron, the older of the two sons, says.
He considered careers in medicine and law and began college studying communications.
“I think around the start of college was when I really said this is what I want to do the rest of my life,” Ron says. “I enjoyed it.”
He realized that lobbying for the industry is part of the business and changed his major to political science and worked for a time for a congressman while a student at Ohio State University. During that time, the company grew exponentially.
“Working with family is one of the greatest things you’ll be able to do and one of the toughest,” Ron Zoldan says.
There are challenges working and disagreements may mix personal and business elements. “But when you’re celebrating and able to see the successes that we’ve been able to accomplish throughout the years, nothing is better than being able to celebrate with your loved ones,” he continues. “That’s really my most important sentimental part about being in the family business.”
Alex Zoldan, who’s five years younger than Ron, started working in the stores as a teenager.
“When I was younger, all my friends wanted to come work at the fireworks store when they were graduating high school and go into that,” he says. “It was a summer job where they can earn their entire summer pay in a few weeks and have the rest of their summer off. So, I can remember being 16,17, 18, and having a lot of buddies there, and it was a lot of fun.”
At 16, he and one of his friends opened a tent in New Castle, Pa., to sell fireworks. That marked Alex’s first experience being responsible for an operation of the business.
“It was a fun learning experience,” Alex says. “It kind of gave me a little entrepreneurial start in that regard. Naturally, I had the place where I was getting the fireworks from and the road map.”
Still, he wasn’t sure what he wanted to do and changed his major in college a couple of times, from business to consumer affairs. After graduating, he worked with the Youngstown Phantoms hockey team which is owned by Bruce Zoldan and the Black Bear Sports Group. It was the first year the team was part of the United States Hockey League.
“I think for me that was some learning drinking from the fire hose, as they say, management style,” Alex says.
He moved over to Phantom, working different roles.
“I kind of came and grew and it’s been a fun journey,” Alex adds. “I like to learn every aspect. I can’t tell you what the next step is, but I’m still trying to learn it now.”
He graduated last month with an executive master’s degree of business administration from OSU.
America250
Planning for the 2026 and 2027 festivities started at Phantom well in advance.
“We always try to buy a year and a half ahead of time,” Alan Zoldan says.
The company imports fireworks from China and navigates related logistical changes each year. “For the 250th we thought about going into it three or four years ago” and Phantom began building up its inventory.
The company was expecting the last of its containers for this year by mid-June.
“So, from that end, I can just logistically say that’s sort of one thing that’s changed for us,” the executive vice president says. “We built ourselves up over the last two and a half to three years to have that inventory that was here for the sales, and that was a planned prospect.”
That planning paid off.
“Unfortunately, in China, there was an explosion at a factory on May 4 that shut down the industry completely,” Alan says. “At that point, we had 95% of our product on the water.”
If that explosion and the subsequent shutdown had happened a few months earlier, the Chinese government could have halted the company’s shipments.
The Chinese government is investigating the explosion in the region that used to have more than 1,000 fireworks factories. That number is down to about 400 because China is raising safety standards, he says.
“And there are unfortunately factories pressing the envelope in various ways…,” Alan adds. “After this, I suspect we’ll probably be somewhere around 350 factories…”
It helps that the company enjoys a good relationship with those factories as well as a positive reputation. Bruce Zoldan is a past president of the American Pyrotechnic Association and Alan is president of the American Fireworks Standards Lab, an underwriters laboratory for the consumer industry.
Phantom is known for its involvement in safety standards and those factories seek out the company to do business, Alan says.
Bruce Zoldan credits his parents as well as his uncle, Abe Yampolsky, with igniting his entrepreneurial spirit. His dad was a salesman and his uncle owned a company that sold nonfood items to grocery stores. Bruce worked at the warehouse. The late state Sen. Harry Meshel also was a mentor.
Among the products his uncle sold were items like Magic Snakes and Party Poppers, toy versions of firework-like wares. Bruce noticed their popularity among customers.
When he was about 16, his dad brought fireworks home from a trip to Pennsylvania.
“Kids in the neighborhood all came and they said, ‘Where can my dad buy some?’” he says. “And I guess the little entrepreneur that I was at the time, I started selling it to them.”
He found out the cost from his dad, sold the fireworks to his friends for double and sold out. His dad had to return to Pennsylvania to buy more fireworks and warned his son not to sell them again.
But that proved the start of his interest in the fireworks industry. He started small, buying items in Toledo – where they were legal – and selling them.
“And before you know it, in ‘75, ‘76, I was doing half a million dollars in business,” he says.
From there, a friend introduced him to a broker in the fireworks industry in China. That broker advised him to import fireworks directly from China. He imported fireworks for less than half of what he was paying in Toledo.
The company faced challenges over the years, including legal restrictions from state to state and in the early days, companies fighting Phantom’s mail order strategy. The only state where fireworks remain illegal is Massachusetts.
“But one of the things about our company, whenever a roadblock was thrown in front of us – and that’s still true today – we work hard to find a legal and safe route around it,” Bruce Zoldan says.
Pictured at top: Ron Zoldan, Alex Zoldan, both vice presidents; Bruce Zoldan, founder and CEO; and Alan Zoldan, executive vice president, stand in front of a mural in the company’s Belmont Avenue headquarters.
