Business owner Les Haworth was still in shock with the rest of the country seven years ago when he suddenly realized he was about to be inundated with customers desperate to express their patriotism.
The date: Sept. 11, 2001, the day terrorists flew passenger jets into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, killing nearly 3,000 people.
The next morning, long lines snaked around Haworth’s once-quiet East Providence shop, Atlantic Flag and Banner. “I called up my supplier and said ‘send me as many flags as you can send me,’” he recalled recently.
In the weeks that followed, people waited for hours to snatch up anything red, white and blue. When American flags ran out, some customers picked up similar-looking Liberia flags.
“We would get a shipment of American flags, stock the shelves and it would be gone within an hour; it was unbelievable,” he said. “It took the flag industry well over a year to recover from that. They couldn’t make things fast enough.”
At the time, Haworth donated a chunk of his profits – he did 10 times the business he had done in the same period a year before – to a relief fund in New York. “It was not a good way to increase business,” he said. “I would not want to go through it again.”
A slower pace has long since returned to the shop on North Broadway where Haworth deals almost exclusively in flags and banners.
Business is down this year – Haworth blames it on consumers’ belt-tightening in an uncertain economy – but he is still plugging away, as he has for 23 years.
Need a Mongolian flag? Haworth has some in stock. How about the flag of Nicaragua, or Peru? He’s got those and flags of dozens of other countries too. Also on the shelves are the flags of all 50 states, in two sizes.
“When people want a flag, a lot of them want it now,” Haworth said in explaining why he keeps an extensive inventory.
Atlantic Flag also carries lines of sports-related banners and decorative flags, although the seasonal decorative flags that some homeowners hang outside their front door have declined in popularity in recent years.
Through it all, Haworth’s best seller has remained the American flag. That explains why there are so many versions of it on sale in his shop – from a tiny lapel pin to a 20-by-30-foot Old Glory. He even used to sell a 30-by-50-foot flag to a Providence car dealership. Price: $1,500.
Atlantic Flag’s busiest time of year? The weeks leading up to Independence Day, of course, when people are shopping for flags and patriotic bunting almost as much as fireworks.
“That’s our Christmas – from the end of March through the Fourth of July,” Haworth said.
Haworth originally opened his business in 1985 as a sign shop in the Rumford section of East Providence, but when an economic slowdown cut into his profits in the early 1990s, he decided to focus on what had been a side business of flags and banners.
“There was less competition,” he recalled.
Not so now. Big-box stores sell inexpensive foreign-made U.S. flags. The same flags are also available on the Internet.
Haworth is unapologetic for not offering the cheaper products. He belongs to an association of flag dealers that strives to sell U.S.-made flags. “I’ll close my doors before I sell an American flag that says ‘Made in China,’ ” he said.
And he added that he offers more to his customers than just the flags and banners. Atlantic Flag sells and installs flagpoles. “Actually, that’s how I built my business,” he said. “Once you sell a flagpole, they’re probably going to come back to you for flags.”
There’s another part of the job that Haworth figures just comes with the territory: Often, people drop in toting tattered American flags, which protocol says should be burned, not thrown away.
“I have people come in here and, even if they have a tiny flag, they’ll come in with it nicely folded and say ‘Will you take care of this for me,’ ” Haworth said.
So for years, Haworth has placed those flags in a cardboard box, and the members of the Veterans of Foreign Wars take them to be burned.
“You wouldn’t believe how many people don’t want their American flag disposed of in the trash,” Haworth said. •
COMPANY PROFILE
Atlantic Flag & Banner
Owner: Les Haworth
Type of business: Flag and patriotic-item retailer
Address: 694 North Broadway, East Providence
Employees: 3, including owner
Established: 1985
Sales: WND
