Selling fireworks a round-the-clock job

Becca Notbohm, right, and her fellow members of the Baker City Church of the Nazarene were surprised at the amount of work and preparation required to operate a fireworks stand. The church has a stand set up in the Safeway parking lot on East Campbell Street. (Baker City Herald/Nathan Hellman)

“My thought was we would come sell fireworks and go home.”

But Notbohm and her fellow members at the Church of the Nazarene soon discovered things would be a little different.

Before opening their tent in the Safeway parking lot off Campbell Street, it become clear that there’s more to selling fireworks than helping customers find the perfect value pack or remembering to offer a “punk” at the end of each transaction.

“It was way bigger than I ever imagined,” Notbohm said. “And I can’t even tell you whether it’s worth it or not.”

(A punk, by the way, is a stick that, once ignited, burns for a while so you can use it to set off your fireworks.)

This is year one for Notbohm and the Church of the Nazarene. But they are hardly the only fresh faces on the Baker City fireworks scene.

Baker City is home to four fireworks stands this year, with less than two years selling experience between them.

The Church of Nazarene holds down Safeway’s parking lot, then across the street at Albertsons the Baker High School girl’s soccer team has a tent and another on 10th Street, and finally the New Beginnings Fellowship Pentecostal Church of God’s stand neighboring the Baker City Armory is on Campbell Street for the second straight year.

But this town has not always been the place of upstart fireworks stands.

This new crop comes on the heels of a 20-year run by the Harvest Christian Church, long the primary fireworks stand operator in Baker City.

With the shifting of the tide comes a handful of surprises, more than a few underestimated expectations and quite a learning curve.

And, it’s worth mentioning, a fair amount of work.

“This firework stand is just the monster that came and ate everything,” Notbohm said with a laugh.

The firework suppliers behind this “monster” are responsible for a few main components before handing the entire operation over.

Jason Trout, area manager for TNT Fireworks and supplier to the Church of the Nazarene, manages 118 stands across Oregon and spends many days cruising across the state to perform check-ins.

Some of these Interstate-heavy days are quite lengthy.

Earlier this week, he departed his Portland office in the morning before hitting stands in Hood River, Baker City, Burns, Lakeview and several other cities along the way.

TNT — the nation’s largest supplier with more than 5,000 stands littered across the country — is responsible for lining up the location, permits, fireworks, tables and tent.

Area managers like Trout also organize an orientation to teach selling techniques and answer any questions before the season kicks off.

After that’s complete, it’s hands off for Trout.

“Once the season begins there is nothing I can do to affect sales,” Trout said. “At this point, I’m just a cheerleader.”

After the season, Trout sits down with each stand operator to configure the finances.

Like most firework suppliers, TNT keeps 80 percent of the sales, and the groups walk away with the other 20 percent for their causes.

And each group has its cause.

The Church of the Nazarene plans to use half the money it raises for mission trips and the other half for a Christian scouting program.

Funding for youth activities has been the target of the New Beginnings Fellowship, while head coach DeeDee Clarke and her Baker High School soccer team hope to make enough to partake in some off-season camps and tournaments, and maybe replace their bent soccer goals, too.

New to the fireworks business, Clarke and her team thought operating a stand would be a breeze.

So, they decided to sign up for two.

The head coach has changed her tune a bit since the stands opened a few days ago, and now Clarke vows this might be her team’s first and only year peddling smoke bombs and sparklers.

“We’ll see how it goes Saturday,” Clarke said.

The sheer amount of work and planning that goes into a smooth, functional operation has been the biggest hurdle for Clarke and her squad thus far.

She called attempting to schedule around her athletically inclined players, a number of whom compete in several other sports, a “nightmare,” and the team has to pack up all the fireworks at both locations every night and then set up again the following morning.

That process takes about three hours total, Clarke said, and is necessary because she doesn’t want her players to have to sleep at the tent.

Across Campbell Street at the Church of the Nazarene stand, Notbohm proudly showed off the bed cushions that members have slept on to guard their fireworks.

While 24-hour surveillance of the tent was somewhat expected, it was a number of other items that caught Notbohm by surprise.

These included arranging for a generator, cash register, credit card machine and even a portable toilet. Luckily for them, Baker Sanitary Service was kind enough to donate the last item.

Even after Notbohm and her fellow church goers have obtained all these fireworks stand essentials, she is blown away by the magnitude of the undertaking.

“There is definitely a learning curve,” Notbohm said. “And who knows if I know what it is yet.”

 Striking a balance between work, family and fireworks has been one of the greatest areas where she initially struggled in this endeavor.

With all this learning, adjusting and configuring going on down the street, it would seem the New Beginnings Fellowship would have an advantage with its first year already done and over.

But Ralph Ward, who was volunteering at the stand Tuesday afternoon, begs to differ.

“There is no advantage,” Ward said adamantly. “The only advantage is in the display and prices.”

Ward went on to explain that the competition within the Baker City fireworks market is practically a dead heat, citing the example that while his church might have a more trafficked corner, the other groups are stationed at locations with parking spaces.

All stand operators agree that location is crucial, but undoubtedly more important to each is the bottom line.

After all, in the end it’s all about the money. 

Whether Clarke and the BHS soccer team operate a stand next year hinges on their sales today and tomorrow. Notbohm and her church are in the same boat.

Notbohm said that the Church of the Nazarene is expecting to end the season with about $2,000 in proceeds. If that doesn’t happen, a second run next year might be out of the question.

“That all depends on Sunday,” Notbohm said, which is when the group’s  profits will be configured. “Because the reason you do this is not to sell fireworks, it is to fund raise.”