COMPARING BIDS AND PROPOSALS

This is very difficult!  You have to try to compare apples to apples.  One company could give you a larger number of shells when you look at the total shell count. But have they given you a large number of the smallest shells to get a high number?  Another thing that can effect the shell count are the rapid fire multiple shot Box’s that are used in a lot of displays.  These are real crowd pleasers.  Technically, these are usually 1.2” shells that are used, so they are “shells” But if a company is using a lot of these box’s in a display, when you have 49 or 100 or even 300 of these “shells” in one box, obviously this can make the shell count look pretty good!

Another thing to look out for are pages and pages in a proposal that make it difficult to figure out just what you are getting!  Some companies make it look good with a large proposal, but no where is an easy to understand summary of the total shell count that you will get for your show!  WHY NOT?

For some reason, a lot of people equate the quality of the show to how many minutes long is the show going to be.  THE LENGTH OF THE SHOW HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH THE QUALITY OF THE SHOW.  Your audience would rather watch an action packed shorter length show, than drawing it out and making It boring!  No one will look at their watch if it is a great show.  Typically, our smallest budget shows will go for 13-15 minutes, while even our largest shows only go for 20 minutes.  15-20 minutes is just about right.

For years, all fireworks were lit by hand firing.  There are some companies that still do a lot of hand firing.  They claim to be doing it the “traditional way”. I’m sorry, but hand firing is a thing of the past.  Companies will hand fire to save money on equipment and labor, but you will NOT get as good a show.

There is absolutely no way that you can match the performance of an electronically fired show with hand firing.  At Kuhn Fireworks, every single show that we perform is fired 100% electronically.  Whether we are flipping switches, or pre-programming our Nighthawk firing systems, or using our computer systems, we don’t light a match to anything!

Using electronics enables us to program and choreograph every single show that we perform, no matter what the budget is.  It takes more time and effort, but the quality of the performance will stand out every time.