I’m a veteran who runs a flag business. We were blindsided by World Cup demand, and sales are up 130%.

• A flag business in Michigan is booming thanks to the World Cup.

• Generally, Flags Unlimited sells mostly US, state and military flags.

• But the company’s president, Erik May, said the increased demand for foreign flags had caught him off guard.

This article, as told, is based on a conversation with Erik May, 43, president of Flags Unlimited, a business based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Business Insider confirmed the sales figures. This piece has been edited for length and clarity.

We are a small business midwest. Requesting Algerian, Moroccan and dozens of Iraqi flags is certainly a rarity here.

Our flag sales normally consist almost entirely of US, state and military flags. So when we started getting more and more questions world flags I knew something was wrong during the offseason in January and February.

Then I started putting it all together. The World Cup was approachingand was about to change our business.

I never expected to run a flag company

I’m from West Michigan and joined the military after 9/11. I thought I would work for a few years, but I ended up spending 14 years in the Air Force and serving in Iraq.

After leaving the military, I started a few businesses. Flag work was something I had never thought about. All I knew was that I loved flags and thought the American flag was beautiful.

Two of my friends were buying Flags Unlimited and I was looking for a new challenge. So we took over the business together in April 2025. It’s been around since 1985 and has been strictly retail related for most of its history.

When we took over, our goal was just to get through the first few months and develop the e-commerce side of the business. We certainly weren’t looking forward World Cup or America’s 250th birthdaybut we definitely benefited from some headwinds.

We knew we were going to have a chaotic summer

Flag business is typically seasonal, so we do most of our work between May and September. So it was especially notable that we started to see an increase during the offseason, when we would normally have anticipated slower sales.

We knew we were in for a chaotic summer when we realized the World Cup would coincide with America’s 250th anniversary celebrations. A few months ago we started adjusting the way we work.

We already had a large catalog of foreign flags, but in April we started adding more to our orders to get them in stock. The challenge is that you can plan, plan, plan, but if one person comes in and buys everything, the plan goes out the window pretty quickly.

There were difficulties in keeping up

Flags are a hot item right now. Day to day, we process orders as soon as we receive them, but we encountered these problems: supply chain issues because everyone is so busy. As demand for flags increases across the country and around the world, suppliers are competing to source raw materials.

Another challenge is that we don’t want to overspend and get stuck with 10,000 American 250th flags because they probably won’t sell for as many later. The same goes for international flags. As teams advance towards the quarterfinals and semifinals, we will adjust and hedge our bets based on inventory. When it comes to the finals, I expect a large share of our flag sales to come from these countries.

Staffing is always a problem. We have increased our manpower for the matches we think the next few weeks of the World Cup will take us to. We hired my wife and two other part-time employees.

These are all good problems to have, but they still need to be addressed.

World Cup strengthened our business

Sales of our international nylon flags have more than doubled compared to last year, and overall sales are up 130% compared to last year.

Ours e-commerce business It’s growing fast, and it’s not just because I’m a smart guy. There are greater forces at work than this.

The World Cup combined with America’s 250th anniversary has strengthened our business. We’ve seen tremendous national growth and these events have definitely moved the needle for us. We were lucky enough to be in the right place at the right time.

We never saw this coming

To some extent we have been blind to this. We did not market this. It just happened.

Football wasn’t a big sport in the United States when I was growing up, and most of what I know comes from watching “Ted Lasso.” But now I’m well aware of it world’s largest sporting eventand we are lucky to have that in this country this year.

I think there are a lot of small businesses like us that benefit from FIFA’s decision years ago to bring the World Cup to North America. Now, the thought of a small flag business in Grand Rapids participating in the World Cup, even in a very small way, seems incredibly surreal.

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