How this North Charleston manufacturer went from a garage to a 24K-square-foot facility

It was 2018 in a garage where Max Berry, Katie Lyon and Wes Lyon started with an idea. Six years later that idea is being made by a team grown from three to 60 pairs of American hands.

The three college friends had one thing on their mind — an American flag made inside the 50 states it symbolizes to unite.

At the time, Berry was in hotel finance, Wes Lyon in software sales and Katie Lyon in the e-commerce space, Berry said. Their funding was directly from the three co-founders, under $5,000 altogether.

Allegiance Flag Supply now produces between 1,100 and 1,200 American flags a day — 100 times the amount it produced in 2018. The company continues to grow, having recently announced a $6.3 million expansion in Charleston County.

“It’s just the utter shock of realizing that so many American flags were actually being made overseas,” Max Berry, co-founder of Allegiance Flag Supply, said. “If there was one thing that deserved to be made here in America, it starts with the American flag.”

Katie Lyon, co-founder of Allegiance Flag Supply, considers it an “American Dream” to have grown from Katie and Wes Lyon’s garage to the current 23,500-square-foot building, located at 7600 Southrail Road in North Charleston.

Their current building houses manufacturing and distribution. Previously, the team was sending materials to a third-party, cut-and-sew shop in Georgia to manufacture the flags.

Where many small businesses struggled during the COVID-19 pandemic, the Allegiance team credits a lot of its growth to the pandemic’s shut-down.

“COVID was a wonderful time for Allegiance. We really took off during that time for reasons of people being inside and stores shut down and e-comm sales were booming,” Katie Lyon said. “I think there’s a moment of ‘we’re all in this together,’ and I think people rallied around the flag in that way for a brief time.”

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Each Allegiance flag goes beyond the red, white and blue appearance. Wes Lyon, co-founder of Allegiance Flag Supply, says the journey starts with 200 denier nylon fabric from Hickory, N.C., then shipped to Upstate New York to be dyed and treated. The fabric is chosen because of its durable, yet flexible material.

The fabric comes back to Charlotte to be split into evenly sized rolls where it’s then sent to Allegiance’s Charleston building to construct the 13 stripes to attach to the pre-made embroidered Star Fields from Greenville.

As the nylon begins transforming into a flag, North Carolina-made thread and webbing connects the fabrics. With double needle lockstitching and bar tacking, the flag is sturdy enough to withstand rips on the edges while most flags endure stress overtime, Wes Lyon said.

Wes Lyon said eight to 10 American businesses make up their supply chain, who benefit from Allegiance’s growth as well. The company uses spinners for its flag poles which prevent the flag from getting wrapped around the pole. Those are created by a man in Utah who owns the small business on his own.

“We’re making an American flag and, in doing so, supporting a 100% American supply chain,” Katie Lyon said. “Continuing to bring more and more people on in this textile world, where so many of their jobs have moved overseas, I think that’s what drives us the most.”

A majority of the flags Allegiance produces and sells are American flags. Additionally, it has a Betsy Ross flag with 13 stars aligned in a circle where the modern flag’s 50 stars now stand.

Though each state buys a flag every week, Texas is its biggest customer, having multiple requests for a Texas flag, Wes Lyon said. For a limited time, Allegiance is making and selling Texas flags, but it doesn’t plan to make state flags on a regular basis.

South Carolina currently stands at the 10th- highest sales for Allegiance, with a lot of its sales correlating to the population of each state.

Allegiance’s most popular item, the 3-by-5-foot American flag, is $85.

Allegiance has customer service representatives around the country who work remote. Serving as the Allegiance customer service lead, as well as the first customer service agent it hired for the company, is a military spouse.

“To be able to offer military spouses a customer service position where they can work anywhere, wherever they’re stationed is really an honor to be able to prioritize,” Katie Lyon said. “They have such a unique American story that they’re able to connect with our customers when they call in and share their American stories.”

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