We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Jorge Gutierrez. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Jorge below.

Jorge, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today We’d love to have you retell us the story behind how you came up with the idea for your business, I think our audience would really enjoy hearing the backstory.

I had received the gift of a woven bracelet in the design of the Colombian flag from my eldest daughter. I wore it all the time, because of who gave it to me and because I am a proud Colombian. So it was on my wrist on a trip to the pet store, where I went to buy a collar for my new puppy. Back in the car, I held the new collar in my hand and saw the bracelet and collar next to each other. At that moment, I wished I could have bought a collar to match my bracelet.

The beginning of the idea for FlagCollars.com was there – but my initial goal was just to get a collar.

Without getting too excited about it, I went home to look for it online. I found no Colombian flag designs anywhere. I’m of Colombian heritage, but born in Costa Rica – so I looked for a Costa Rican flag collar and found nothing. That led to a rabbit hole dive of searching for more country flags on collars and no one was selling them, no one was doing it.

So I ran the idea by my wife – and we agreed that this was a way to make a dog collar special by making it personal.

The dog collar we would make would actually represent something. I felt like I found a new channel to display cultural pride, national pride.

I ran the idea by family members and trusted my gut more than anything. It involved dogs, which I am in love with – so at the very least I expected it to be fun.

Dog collars have always had prints, colors, designs – but nothing especially meaningful. This would be a dog collar that has meaning behind it. While it didn’t solve a problem per se, it was an offering of something that absolutely didn’t exist. That meant people would be happy to find out about us.

Sometimes you let the customer tell you the what and tell you the why – in developing your business. I started hearing from customers who had named their dogs after places in the world they’d visited. One in particular was a pair of dogs named Athens and Munich. The owner of these dogs purchased several collars from us throughout their lives – often including emailed pictures of the dogs which became part of our website gallery of dogs and cats.

Upon Athens’ passing, the owner placed his Greek collar inside Athens’ chest of special keepsakes and sent us a photo of this, which choked me up. It was a gratifying and moving experience to see just how meaningful our products had become to this family.

We saw proof of that again, when Russia invaded Ukraine. Our sales of our Ukraine flag design went through the roof. We saw people using our collars to show solidarity to the people of Ukraine – whether they were of Ukrainian heritage or not.

Jorge, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

One of the things I am most proud of is that we make our collars ourselves, which wasn’t always the case. When we first started in 2007, we had our products made overseas. I quickly realized that was a bad business model. Rather than investing in inventory, I invested in equipment and learned how to make our own products. We have been operating as a made in the USA business since 2010.

We are made in the USA, our components come from the USA. We are proud of that fact. Yet we as a small business do struggle under the mandatory, high minimums imposed by fabric manufacturers and weavers in the USA. And because our products are made here, with USA-made components, we feel that we offer a premium product.

Our product variety centers on dog collars and leashes, as well as cat collars. When we first began, we featured one line of products, our classic line of country flags. Since then, we have expanded and found success with other lines that vary on the theme of national pride. And to further demonstrate the meaningfulness of our products we’ve been able to tap into the worldwide excitement of the World Cup with our soccer line.

Okay – so how did you figure out the manufacturing part? Did you have prior experience?

Two years after starting the business, we took a pause. We were only offering about 12 country flag designs. Each time we ordered even one new design from overseas, it meant spending thousands of dollars in MOQ, import fees, customs fees, and so on. Not to mention having to wait 30 to 60 days for the product. There are officially 192 countries on the planet and we could not see a way to come close to this number without changing our manufacturing process. We were also a direct-to-consumer company so we weren’t moving large amounts of single designs. We kind of play the long-tail game. It didn’t take an in-depth cost analysis to figure out that we would be better off investing in capital goods rather than in inventory. Ordering from overseas had its advantages such as receiving tagged, bagged products ready to ship out to customers. But making our own products meant many more advantages, and not just economic ones. I had never made a dog collar in my life but I figured, how hard can it be? We took the financial plunge and bought and leased industrial equipment and learned how to make our products. We have a JIT (Just in Time) system where we make each order within 24 hours or receipt. If we notice that a small change in a design is needed or preferable, we simply make it. If we want to launch a new line, we simply design it, print it, sew it and put it up for sale. We even have customers asking us to put their dog’s or cat’s name on the collar, which we can easily do. We’ve learned that for us, having better control is more valuable than saving a few dollars. In the long run it’s better for us and our customers.

We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?

The audience on social media for FlagCollars is small in comparison to some other brands – but it is growing as we grow. And we grow it organically with real photos and real testimonials. It’s much slower than buying reviews but we prefer a genuine message. Over time, we’ve learned to focus on how engaged our audience is, rather than its total size. We have a presence on Instagram and Facebook and are currently working on building an identity on Pinterest.

We crowd-source the majority of our images, which gives our audience proof that our collars look good on actual dogs. It has been a journey to discover what resonates with the community. To be sure, social media has evolved since we began. We have had to adapt from the static photo share to include entertaining video clips and behind the scenes footage of how the collars are made.

Our advice is to find ways to use video, as it is what is most consumed via shopper-friendly sites like Instagram. Video doesn’t just mean traditional, point-shoot-record video. You can stitch photos together in a slideshow, add music and you’re done. Repurpose trending audio or make the templates feature on Instagram work with those product shots you have.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.flagcollars.com
• Instagram: @flagcollars
• Facebook: flagcollars
• Other: Pinterest.com/flagcollars

Image Credits
All photos courtesy of Jorge Gutierrez, FlagCollars.com Owner Photo 1 – Jorge Gutierrez and family pet, Bongo – the puppy from our origin story Photo 2 – 4 – Jorge Gutierrez working the press, printer, and sewing machine at our manufacturing facility in Passaic, NJ Photo 5 & 6 – Athens and Munich, the dogs mentioned in the story where we received proof about our company having touched the lives of our customers