Superior Fireworks’ Sales Skyrocket This Season With the Help of PayPal's Bill Me Later

Christmas comes in July for Superior Fireworks, an Orange Park, Fla-based online retailer of fireworks. After all, instead of the traditional Christmas busy season, more than 60 percent of Superior Fireworks’ sales are made during the run up to July 4. Furthermore, many of those sales are made via PayPal and it's Bill Me Later service. To find out why, I conducted an email interview with the founder of Superior Fireworks, Matt Pappas. Here are some excerpts from our conversation:

Melissa Campanelli: Tell me about Superior Fireworks?
Matt Pappas: We founded Superior Fireworks in 2001 in an effort to bring fireworks to the ‘newish’ e-commerce realm. Since then, we’ve been growing steadily, and have added a year-round party supply spin-off, Superior Celebrations, and started making physical sales out of our warehouse.

MC: What's your average order size?
MP: Our transaction size varies widely among the different divisions of our company, but the average online retail fireworks purchase would be about $400. On our Superior Celebrations website, our average is about $58 per order. Also, about half of our business comes from bulk orders, and 45 percent of those are sales to consumers that are purchasing in large quantities.

MC: Why do such a large percentage of your orders during the 4th of July season come via PayPal?
MP: Approximately 15 percent of our total sales come through PayPal, and that number is growing every year. Some customers prefer PayPal because it securely stores their payment information, and they don’t have to enter it again when checking out. Some customers like the built-in buyer protection they get when making a purchase through PayPal. Finally, some customers appreciate the interest-free, six-month financing they get from Bill Me Later.

We stared offering Bill Me Later when PayPal made it available in 2009. It was very important for us, as many of our competitors offered credit options, but we had never done so. This allowed us not only to keep up, but to one up their short-term credit offerings with Bill Me Later's six-month option at no risk to us.

MC: Why do you think PayPal transactions are, on average, larger?
MP: New Year’s Eve, another big holiday for fireworks, and Fourth of July are almost exactly six months apart — tailor made for a Bill Me Later purchase. We believe customers feel comfortable deferring the cost of larger, seasonal purchases over that period.

MC: Given that tomorrow is July 4, what are some of your most popular fireworks?
MP: Our most popular category of fireworks would be maximum load, 500-gram repeaters. Within that category, America's Celebration is our best-seller. It's big, loud, and red, white and blue — everything you would want in a firework for the Fourth of July.