
SOUTHGATE,�Michigan USA — Started in 1980 as a fireworks store, Commonwealth Displays partners, Steve Le Fleur and Donald Moore, soon let their interest in model rocketry lead them to add model rocket kits to the company's repertoire soon after they opened their business. Their store is located in Southgate, a suburb of Detroit, located nine miles southwest of the city, at 12649 Dix-Toledo Road.
Claimed to be the first model rocketry company online, they duo started doing virtual business before the global networking of computers and networks was even called the Internet. Beginning with advertising on UseNET newsgroups, the pair moved on to Prodigy and then onto the World Wide Web, what is today commonly considered the modern Internet. Commonwealth Displays was a trailblazer for the hobby online, being one of the first model rocketry companies to take credit cards, one of the first model rocketry companies with an e-commerce shopping cart-enabled web and one of the few companies who still ship world-wide today.