Why is Skylighter going out of business?

[billysundays]

Whats the story here? I mean its the most successful and popular pyro supply shop. Never even got a chance to order from them. Sucks!

[rogeryermaw]

harry's been through a lot over the years trying to keep new pyros going. he decided it was time to retire. or so i hear it.

[MadMat]

I'm sorry to see them go. They had a pretty good selection of chemicals and with their "daily deals", those chemicals were at a dam good price.

[bobd]

Harry has been at it for the best part of 30 years, and it seems he has decided to take some time off for Harry. Running Skylighter is a *big* job, and so far as I know, Harry is approaching (or has reached) 70. Most of us would have thrown in the towel by now, but he kept it going as long as was reasonable.

Take care, Harry and enjoy your retirment.

Bob

[OldMarine]

Harry tried to sell the business with no success and defending himself from the govt ABC depts got tiresome so he liquidated the whole shebang. I sure hope he allows someone to archive or host the information there because there's a lot of good stuff there.

[billysundays]

Harry tried to sell the business with no success and defending himself from the govt ABC depts got tiresome so he liquidated the whole shebang. I sure hope he allows someone to archive or host the information there because there's a lot of good stuff there.

Hasn't he reached out to this forum about what's the plan for all that info, or is this forum not his usual haunt?

[OldMarine]

Hasn't he reached out to this forum about what's the plan for all that info, or is this forum not his usual haunt?

Harry very rarely visits any forums. His site was where he hung. I figure he's a heckuva businessman and will find a way to keep the info available and make a penny or two for himself.

[dagabu]

My opinion only is that the prices maintained were too high to rise sales to the quantities necessary to grow and stay profitable. Even at 75% off, 1-3/4" disks are just a hair lower than any of the three biggest pyro disk re-sellers. I wish Harry well, he is a great friend of pyro but he gets too greedy at times. I was buying from him back before the alphabet soup guys got s hold of him and he STILL was 2-3 times the price of anybody in the pyro magazines.

[mikeee]

As soon as the "agencies" set their sites on the next potential Pyro retailer target you will see their prices go up

to pay for legal defense. On a high profile business such as Pyro chemicals the city, county, state and federal

agencies can all provide challenges for anyone scaling up an enterprise like SkyLighter. It only takes (1) incident

to draw the scrutiny of these agencies to a new or existing business. Once you become a target the legal expense

will be a yearly overhead. If a city or county does not want a particular business in their area they can also make it

very difficult for a start-up company.

[dagabu]

Naw, Harry's prices were extraordinarily high way before the CSPC got a hold of his short hairs.

[Robinhood60]

Skylighter died back in 2015 but no one would call it, it's hard to stay in business when you don't have anything people want IMHO.

[OldMarine]

Skylighter died back in 2015 but no one would call it, it's hard to stay in business when you don't have anything people want IMHO.

I disagree. Though Harry charged a premium price he had a better selection than anyone. Exotic metals? Check.

Try finding chlorowax or other weird chlorine donors elsewhere. I'll miss SL since my inherited horde of chems were mostly in SL boxes and tubs. Harry probably did more to advance amateur pyro than any other single person including Kosanke who he bought the floundering supply house from.

[chuckufarley]

+1 OM,

While skylighter was not the cheapest place to buy from, they did have a wide variety of hard (impossible?) to find supplies/chems, along with great tutorials hosted there, and the entertaining commentary, I will miss skylighter.

[greenlight]

Anybody know if the tutorials are going to be saved somewhere as there is a lot of them?

[MrB]

It's been talked about before, and nobody seams to know what is going to happen. I've made a offline archive for my own safe keeping, but it is far from complete, i only grabbed the newsletters, charts & tables, project plans, and the safety manual. And looking through the result i already know there is links it screwed up on me, and i have to redo it, lots of the pages are simply missing, and drops you on the online site. Not real helpful at this point.

[greenlight]

I think I might have to start copying the content in casevit dossappears altogether. Thanks.

[Draco_Americanus]

well this does suck, i was wondering why the selection of stuff was going down and now very happy that i am a hoarder but this does pop up another question, is there an alt company to get some of this stuff from?

FirefoxFX wants a permit to order there good stuff and hard to find stuff

[Mumbles]

Depends what you're looking for. These are the 4 big ones that come to mind right now. There are other resellers, but I'm less familiar with them, or only offer select items.

 

Pyrochemsource

FireworksCookbook

Phil's General Store

Firefox

[MDH]

I think the best thing we can do is compile our best available information on the manufacture of components we use and make a series of guides for them. Really put the "DIY" in DIY pyrotechnics. As insane people try to make explosives to do mean things to people on a greater scale, it will become more difficult for those of us who do this as a hobby to simply do it without being on a dozen watch lists and having to jump through hoops of security clearance just to make a blue burning star and whatnot.

 

So - perhaps we can come up with a single guide for the "Best known" at home, optimized setup for making chlorates and perchlorates, or "homebrew chlorine donors" or whatever have you. Or an entire ebook just compiled of how to make/obtain, safely, our own reagents for use, such as all the elemental salts of strontium, copper, etc. Just throwing ideas out there.

[MrB]

Soooo. Looks like this close-down finally managed to get a buyer for the whole thing shook out of the woods. Perhaps the price was "more right" or whatever this time. Anyway... Does anyone know who this "Mike Gerson" is? Member of PGI and WPA, so someone might have run in to him and know who it is?

Skylighter remaining up and running isn't helping us on the other side of the pond, but it is good for you people... i think?

 

They are, he is, promising a new website as well.

[Xtreme Pyro]

I've known about this for awhile but was asked not to say anything until things got running again. Mike is a very good friend of mine, who I've known for several years, as well as a fellow club member and manufacturer. He purchased skylighter several months ago when I mentioned the business was up for sale and going out of business. Like many of us skylighter was one of the biggest contributers to beginning his pyro hobby, and he didn't want to see such a great resource fade away. He owns several of his own businesses and is quite successful.

 

He is also in steady contact with Harry Gilliam to help along a bit until everything is back to normal. Some things are out of stock as he is still receiving product, but we can expect things to run as they always have with no intereference, and yes a new website is in progress.

Edited January 10, 2018 by Xtreme Pyro

[starxplor]

I wonder if the prices will come down to be more in line with other retailers? I know at least one chem there is 300% the price of the same thing on fireworkscookbook.

 

I also came into the hobby via skylighter articles and so I am very happy to see at least the info is being kept available.

[OldMarine]

I hope the new owner gets Harry to write the email ads because it was one of the few multi posters a day I never marked as spam since they were usually very entertaining.

[FireCraftPyro]

Skylighter; ahh how I still remember when I got into pyro thanks to that site.

 

Back when I was about 10 years old when I got my first laptop for my tenth Birthday, I started exploring the web for hours a day and internet surfing quickly became my number one pastime. In those few years of exploration, I picked up many of the interests and hobbies that I have to this day, including pyrotechnics.

 

It all started when I saw some videos of fireworks and decided to go to my local 4th of july stand to pick up some fountains. Unfortunately the state that I used to live in and the state that I currently live in are nanny states which allow only "safe and sane" fireworks only on 2 days of the whole year.

 

Regardless, as I began looking through the web, I caught wind of some YouTube videos of firework modding and simple pyro device manufacturing. I was amazed at how one could make their own firework devices, perfected exactly to one's specifications and preferences even from home chemicals. I went to my local Loews and picked up some KNO3 and other stuff and began to source chemicals from hardware stores.

 

I soon realized that buying chemicals from hardware stores doesn't provide nearly everything that I was gonna need to start building real beautiful fireworks. As I started to search more and more on the internet, I found Harry Gillaim's wonderful site with all his tutorials and guides. The tutorials are very in-depth and very user friendly. As a wannabe pyro amateur, the tutorials helped me grasp the basics of fireworks manufacture.

 

I found it amazing that one can source pretty much any pyro chemical they need off the internet, and this was especially true with Skylighter as their inventory was unmatched ever by any website. I really was interested by their kits, where I could get all the chemicals, and at times even tools to create wonderful firework devices.

 

I first started off with buying their plasma cutter fountain kit as it seemed a good starting kit for a noob, and the price was only around 20-25 bucks which is a hell of a deal considering the fountains in my state could only be bought on 4th of july and usually cost 20 bucks a pop. I made some of 'em fountains and was really amazed with how great they were. I then bought a D1 star pumping kit which I used to make some stars, I didn't really know what stars were at first when I started doing pyro. I was also very satisfied with the 5/8th inch star pump that was included with the kit. I didn't know much and the kits really helped me out. I also bought a Strontium Nitrate sparkler kit to make some sparklers. To this day, Skylighter is one of the only comprehensive sources of information on how to manufacture one's own sparklers. It's not really a common thing to do for amateur pyros, shells and other such fireworks seem to be more popular, but I find making my own sparklers very interesting. I also bought a 4 oz. rocket kit and I still use the tooling included with it to this day. In fact, I made some sparklers a few weeks ago using a modified version of a comp. that I found on PyroData.

 

Most people get into hobby pyro as people who were already previously avid fans of shooting off consumer fireworks. I was not one of them, I have only used commercial fountains and all other fireworks I've used were mostly all homemade. Thus, I was kind of lost at all the pyro terms, and skylighter really helped me kick-start my hobby. Without them, I would have never got into pyro without Skylighter.

 

I have been doing pyro on and off for a very long time now, and I have just recently seriously got into pyro again. The last time I was actively making fireworks was about 4-5 years ago, but I have kickstarted my hobby once more. To this day, 100% of all the chemicals and tools which I have ordered online have come from the one site Skylighter, mostly from kits.

 

Thank you Skylighter for teaching me how to make fireworks!! I'm so glad I got into fireworking.

[Shellaxd]

I too received the emails from Mike that items were returning to stock, and I got the biggest smile on my face! As someone who was more or less introduced to diy by Mr. Gilliam, I was actually quite distressed to see it go. THANKS MIKE!