Fireworks Business Is Booming

The rockets' red glare has been lighting up the faces of Americans. In big cities and small towns -- on football fields across America -- business in the fireworks industry is, well, booming.

"To use the old pun, it is truly been skyrocketing," says Philip Butler of Fireworks By Grucci.

The business is soaring at a rate of eight percent per year, reports CBS News Correspondent John Roberts. Revenues for 1999 are expected to be 450 million dollars. And the most explosive growth is not in July Fourth spectaculars that draw huge crowds, but in professional fireworks displays right in your own backyard.

Butler of Fireworks By Grucci added the Grucci touch to his own daughter's wedding. Where most of their business used to be in public displays, now, sixty percent of the company's revenue is in such private celebrations.

"We did one $100,000 program for a gentleman," Butler says. "He was celebrating his wife's fortieth anniversary and he had ten guests."

Not all displays are for people with money to burn. Companies will burst bombs in your air for as little as three thousand dollars. So even if you're not celebrating the birth of a nation, it can still be a blast.