A flag banner wholesaler, with the inclusion of mounting systems, such as hanging hardware, pole banner hardware, and poles that display feather banners, teardrop banners, and flag banners, to name a few, is a company that can sell to a protected dealer market, or sell at wholesale pricing to any category of client – typically businesses – that they choose to sell to or through.

What is a flag banner wholesaler?

Traditionally, in the US, a wholesaler was a company that might specialize in a few products within a narrow category, say, banners or outdoor flags and the like, who would sell to resellers in specific markets, e.g. California, New York or Georgia, in “protected territories.” In other words, if you had the contract to sell banners from XYZ Banner Manufacturing in the state of Georgia, you could not sell to clients in California or any other state/territory, as assigned by XYZ Banner Manufacturing (a fictitious entity, by the way, as far as we know).

Other company’s, such as the fictitious ABC Banner Company, might sell wholesale to anyone who could prove to them that they had a resellers permit or license, such as a website that might sell nationwide or worldwide. This type of client would not have any territorial restrictions, and much of what is sold in the US today, especially if sources offshore, would be examples of this type of wholesale seller.

The last category, which has become very common in the last couple of decades, are companies who sell “wholesale to business,” to the exclusion of most private buyers (consumers). These companies have developed this type of “wholesaling” in response to ever increasing price pressure in their markets, and often source offshore to augment shrinking profit margins or simply as opportunistic and allegedly forward thinking resellers.

All wholesaler’s sell below consumer price levels, which is what the base definition of a wholesaler is, but as you can see, there are many variations on that business model, and it is up to the individual businesses to decide how to implement themselves in this type of market.

What is a warranty?

Wholesale Flag Banners rarely carry a warranty, which is a promise, in essence, to replace the banner if anything goes wrong with it.

What is the reason for the lack of warranty on such items?

Namely, because the seller has no control of how it is hung or displayed. If the banner is displayed indoors, they will never need a warranty if the product is made from quality polyester or polyvinylchloride (also known as PVC or just plain “vinyl”), and printed with top quality inks from Japan, the US, Germany, Italy, or Korea.

If the banners are displayed/installed out-of-doors, all bets are off due to the sun, wind, and other inclement weather conditions that the manufacturer/wholesaler has no control over.

Your best bet as a client is to make sure that the manufacturer of wholesale flags and banners uses the best polyester materials and nylon webbing reinforcing in the hems/seams in order to resist inclement weather conditions, although sunlight cannot be stopped and is the leading cause of deterioration in banner longevity, along with high winds.

Wholesaler License

How do you obtain a wholesaler license? It depends.

Our company, for instance, distributes for various manufacturers that do not issue wholesale contracts for protected territories, so there is no need for any type of licensing.

If a company issues “licensing” to protected territories, it is not a government stamp of approval saying that your company is a licensed wholesaler, per se, but as a company policy, you would be approved as a wholesale vendor for that company’s products and/or services.

Flag Banner Printing – Printing Method(s)

Some of our clients, at least those who like to know how things work, have asked about the processes used to print flags and banners, so here goes…

Unlike DTF (direct-to-fabric) printing, our printers use the “dye sublimation” printing method, which uses a CMYO dye set (that stands for Cyan-Magenta-Yellow-Clear) rather that the traditional CMYK (that stands for the same thing except the K is black whereas the O is clear, but they ultimately both end up black).

With direct printing, the banner flag is printed with a series of tiny ink dots which vary with color saturation. Using ink is a one step process, and can be done on both vinyl and fabric banners.

However, there is a difference with dye sublimation printing.

Dye sublimation works like this – using the aforementioned CMYO dye set, the digital printer is used to print a transfer paper with the desired image. The paper is matched up to the appropriately sized polyester fabric – which may be one of many weights and finishes from knits to poly silks to light box fabrics to outdoor “canvas” – then fed through heated rollers at about 400F at about 400 lbs. of pressure.

As the paper and fabric enter the heated and pressurized rollers, the dye on the paper (due to the heat) is converted to a gaseous dye, whilst the cells within the poly-fabric, simultaneously, open like a flower in the sun, and the dye infuses the cell with color, which then closes up with the color in the cells as the fabric cools.

This process is more akin to film developing than digital printing, as the heat and pressure combination create a continuous tone like a photograph rather than dots simulating continuous tones that is the process digital printing uses. The dye also has become integral to the fabric, and does not sit on top of the fabric as ink does (the appropriate inks do adhere to fabrics very well, but not the same method and in our opinion, slightly lower quality printing).

Do wholesalers send samples?

I can’t speak for other flag banner wholesalers, but I would think most will. We do.

It would be difficult to visualize the various materials available if you’re not familiar with them, so it would be unwise on our part not to send samples if requested.

We send out our most popular materials, twelve to be exact, to most clients. Slight variations in weight and finish of the fabrics are available as well, but most of our clients find what they need from the dozen samples we send out on request.

Barry Brown has been in the Sign, Banner, Decal and Display Business for over 20 years. It isn’t what he thought he’d do with his life, but he says he knows too much now to do anything else! He has been marketing these products online since 1998, and the company he was general manager of in 1998 was the first sign company to be listed on Yahoo!