Maine Flag co.
“I discovered through serendipity that Maine actually has two official state flags. There's the blue flag that everybody sees, and then there's actually a white flag that you're supposed to fly if you have a boat. And I thought, wow, this would be a nice gift for my donor. I went around trying to find one, you know, a nice applicator, handmade one, and just discovered that nobody made these flags anywhere and ultimately had to hire a custom flag maker out of Connecticut to do this as a custom job. It was pretty expensive. And I thought, boy, wouldn't it be fun to try to make this,” says Chris Korzen, co-owner of Maine Flag Company.
Chris and his wife Bethany Field craft Maine flags in the heart of Portland. These flags tell quite a story as they aren’t just pieces of fabric you hang outside of your home, but rather stand as a symbol and representation for Maine’s history and culture.
“We discovered that there was a historical flag, the original Maine flag, which was in place from 1981 to 1989, and this is a very simple flag. It is off white with a green pine tree and a blue star. And, you know, I've always been very fond of flags and sort of the emotional resonance that they have with people. And the official state flag of Maine, which is the blue one, really looks like a lot of other flags. There's like 20 or so other states that have extremely similar flags and are difficult to tell apart from any distance. And we thought, boy, wouldn't it be interesting to start to, you know, bring this back and see if people would be interested in a more simple and authentic representation of Maine,” says Chris.
As the sewer of the brand, Bethany skillfully crafts anywhere from 20 to 30 flags per day. Her talented eye for the flag’s composition must align with its identified purpose in order to make their products not only aesthetically pleasing but functional as well.
“So there are several different ways that I will piece a flag together, depending on how it's going to be used. Maybe I'll sandwich a few layers of colors together to create the design. Other times it is pure applique where I'm putting pieces on top of a flag field. There's just a lot of working on it and figuring it out and kind of figuring out what works,” says Bethany.
Their business, like most, has had its ups and downs but with the encouragement of their community, as well as the support they’ve received by representing the great state of Maine, they are growing substantially day-to-day.
“I've always been a fan of local economies wherever I am. And, you know, I think it's always been a dream of mine to own a business and especially a business that made a product that we could sell to the people. But it was really important to me personally to make sure that we were doing as much of that work as possible. So it was always important to me to make sure that we were doing that work as close to home as possible. And so I think that just, generally speaking, you know, I have a bias toward locally made products and locally grown work. But, of course, given the nature of the products that we're making, there was a particular onus to make sure that we were doing this in Maine. It would have been very easy for us to take this project to China and have these flags made mass-produced at a much lower price point. But I don't think that would be great for the brand. And it wouldn't do as much for our home as I would like it to,” says Chris.