"Look at a 7-year-old child watching a fireworks show and look at an 80-year-old person watching a fireworks show," says Phil Grucci, 52. "Short of the wrinkles on the face of the older person, the expression is almost always the same."
Fireworks by Grucci has been in business for 165 years -- and will be lighting up the sky at Ceasars Palace in Las Vegas this 4th of July. While most family operations can't make it past the third generation — only 3% do — Grucci's has survived into its sixth, growing from a hobby into the multi-million dollar family business it is today. It hasn't been an easy trip, though, with a trans-Atlantic move, a dip in the Depression and the loss of family and factory in a building explosion.
"I’d like to say the company was always profitable," says Phil, Grucci's fifth generation and current president, but of course that's not the case.
The story tracks back to 1850 when Angelo Lanzetta was more interested in the craftsmanship of a single shell than the booming displays we're accustomed to today. Lanzetta worked as a barber, among other jobs, in Italy and immigrated to America with his son Anthony in 1870. After opening a factory on Long Island, NY, they catered mostly to small Italian festivals and religious feasts, but kept the barber trade alive.
It wasn't until Phil's grandfather, Felix Grucci, took over as the third generation that Fireworks by Grucci really became the family's sole livelihood. "His family lived off of the success of the company," Phil says. "They ate based on how successful the firework displays were."
But it was a tough time to be a startup in 1929. Margins were slim, and revenue was nothing close to the 9-10% growth the company has seen over the last six years. "During the Depression, there wasn’t much fireworks," Phil says. "There were no celebrations happening."
That's when Felix got creative. He spent nights as a drummer with a local band, and during the day used his manufacturing artistry to build explosion simulators (think: a non-lethal atomic bomb) for the Department of Defense to use in military training.
"Without talent and adaptability, you won't be a successful entrepreneur," says Wayne Rivers, President of the Family Business Institute. "If you're manufacturing a product or providing a service, you have to make sure to have a broad offering so you're not susceptible to the ups and downs of a market."
Felix's handiwork kept the family comfortable and Grucci's afloat, a team of three at the time that has now grown to more than 200 employees across a factory, studio and six distribution centers. Now, with Phil at the helm, Grucci's puts on pyrotechnic shows that range in price from $3,500 to in excess of $10 million. They've performed at every presidential inauguration from Ronald Reagan's through George W. Bush's, at four Olympic games, and in 2013/2014 Grucci's broke a world record for the largest fireworks display, fired from the world’s tallest building, in Dubai.
Some of those successes would have been difficult to imagine back in 1983, when Phil was a sophomore in college studying finance and not yet trying to fill the very large shoes of his father, James. The Gruccis had become America's first family to win the gold medal for the United States at the International Fireworks Competition.
But then in 1983, disaster struck. An explosion leveled the factory on Nov. 26, weeks before New Year's Eve, killing Phil's father and a cousin.
"We didn’t have much time to think, and frankly something that catastrophic, we were numb to the senses of what was happening around us," Phil says. "If we were going to continue we needed to fulfill the contract and obligations that we had for New Year's Eve."
So they pushed on, borrowing supplies from industry friends and setting up a temporary facility to finish the year as promised. It was after the new year, seated around a dining room table for Sunday dinner, when the family decided what would come next. "We came out of that meeting with a unanimous decision to continue to fight this fight and rebuild the company," Phil remembers. "If it wasn’t for the strength of the family we had, we would have never been able to dig out from such a devastating loss."
They won the support of their local township to reconstruct a factory on Long Island and performed major casino openings from the Mirage in 1989 to the Wynn Macau. It was around the late 90s, when Phil started thinking about diversification to help further secure Grucci's survival, that they got back in the military game. Grucci's won a contract in 1997 to build non-lethal missile simulators for government training, and after five years of work, moved their factory to a vacant Army facility in Virginia. Military manufacturing is now about 50% of Grucci's business, with the other half chalked up to domestic and international entertainment.
Diversification and dedication aren't the only igniters of Grucci's continued triumph, though. The family was also able to successfully navigate what Rivers calls "a crisis that's just beginning to reveal itself in family business" — restructuring the company when the family tree gets a little too wide. "You have to have a criteria for how you're going to make decisions," Rivers says. "In the absence of that, innovation and growth just calcify."
In 2012, Phil sat down with his uncle, Felix Jr., and Aunt Donna, all of whom had a 1/3 stake in the company, but Felix and Donna were interested in retirement, and Phil was itching to push forward. So, he bought out his aunt and uncle to be the company's sole owner, and in 2013 Phil took over as president. To this day, Grucci's remains family-owned.
"What happens with family business as generations go on is the tree becomes a lot wider," Phil says. "Now myself owning and operating, the company is again realigned to be vertical, and my children and nephew are part of the business, so it’s certainly not widespread. That’s where you start having the difficulties: when the business becomes horizontal not vertical."
Now, with more than 3,000 firework variations in his arsenal, Phil is shining a light on the environmental end of the business -- reducing smoke and researching ways to make cardboard debris "biodegradable or self-consuming," he says. "My direction I’d like to see as we go forward is putting equal amount of focus on continuing to refine our artistic capabilities and at the same time becoming prudent in our concern for the environment."
The Grucci family's art form has changed dramatically over the years from single shells to computer-ignited masterpieces. Leadership has shifted and new accolades were earned. And while their clientele has grown from religious festivals to some of the world's biggest names -- take Frank Sinatra, for example -- a few have stayed the same even nearly 100 years later.
"There are some of the shows in this speckled book [my grandfather] had that we’re still, to this day, performing consecutively since he started," Phil says. "Out in East Hampton, the Devon Yacht Club's first program was around $50. Now it’s over $15,000."
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