Jack and Doreen’s 50th Anniversary

Our founders, Jack and Doreen Braverman, recently celebrated their 50th Anniversary at the Jericho Tennis Club where they had met in 1964. The party was full of friends and family and even included some specially made toothpick flags with a picture of the couple from their wedding day.

A small excerpt from the invitation:

“We met at the Jericho Tennis club in 1964. Jack had a broken ankle from skiing. He asked me to dance! Well, it was the day of the twist. Somehow we managed. […] When we got married he said it was just for 50 years and then he was cutting out. Please join us at the Jericho Tennis Club… Maybe you can help him change his mind.”

I think it’s safe to say that the crowd succeeded in their mission.

Best wishes Jack and Doreen!

 

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Working together to end bullying

Susan Braverman, President of The Flag Shop, was bullied in grade 8 and will never forget the trauma of having to change schools to escape the torment. She was one of the lucky ones who had the support of her family to help her through a devastating period, but not everyone does. Ever since then, Susan has been conscious of what bullying can do to people.

In early 2014, The Flag Shop was asked to produce a flag based on the winning design for a Pink Shirt Day competition submitted by Grace Fenton, a Grade 7 student from New Brunswick. Susan immediately knew that she had found the perfect design to represent The Flag Shop’s Anti-Bullying Campaign, an initiative that all 13 shops across Canada were strongly committed to championing.

img-antibullying-susanBy the end of 2014, The Flag Shop was granted exclusive rights to use Grace Fenton’s design for any campaigns that would help communicate the important message that “Bullying is not acceptable and needs to be stopped.”

The Flag Shop team was ecstatic because Grace’s design offers a positive message representing helping those who need our help. It is easily understood by everyone.

Bullying is a serious problem, whether it’s happening at school, at work, on the internet or for racial, sexual or other predatory reasons. This problem is much bigger than people may be aware of or willing to admit, and The Flag Shop is committed to spreading the message that EVERY DAY IS ANTI-BULLYING DAY!

At The Flag Shop, we believe that business is about more than just the bottom line. With the launch of our Anti-Bullying Initiative, we are doing what we can to raise awareness across Canada that bullying behaviour is unacceptable.

The Flag Shop Anti-Bullying products price points have been established to enable fundraising initiatives across Canada, whether it be for your school, workplace, or social group. In addition, partial proceeds from every Anti-Bullying product sold will go into a fund to support product donations for Anti-Bullying awareness efforts.

The entire Flag Shop team is committed to spreading this Anti-Bullying message! We will continue to add new products based on Grace’s design and over time, as our fund grows, our capability to accept donation requests for products to support Anti-Bullying campaigns will increase. Donation requests can be submitted at any of our Flag Shop locations, from coast to coast.

The Flag Shop is committed to raising awareness that bullying behaviour inflicts tremendous damage, and while we cannot change the past, we can do our part to influence the future. With the support of our fellow Canadians, we will strive for to make our already amazing country BECOME BULLY FREE – a country where EVERY DAY IS ANTI-BULLYING DAY!

All of The Flag Shop’s Anti-Bullying products are available online and at each of the 13 Flag Shop locations across Canada.

See www.antibullyingflag.ca for more information.

We are PROUDLY CANADIAN!

Press Release: THE FLAG SHOP JUMPS ON BOARD TO SUPPORT ANTI-BULLYING INITIATIVES ACROSS CANADA (PDF)

“Respect Our Teachers” paper flags

 

Paper flags just got here! And by paper flags, we mean just the paper. Now comes the labour intensive part where we hand staple all of them to the sticks.

We invite you to come pick them up in our store (1615 Powell Street) on Saturday afternoon and distribute them at the rallies at the Vancouver Art Gallery (Sunday morning 10 a.m.) and Holland Park in Surrey (Sunday evening 5 p.m.).

The paper flags are FREE to take to rallies, protests, and picket lines. If for some reason they are not all distributed, you can bring them back to us so we can keep giving them out. Or if people start tossing them, they can be collected and brought back. We’ll recycle the ones in rough shape.

Some people have given us donations for the free items to help us cover costs which we definitely appreciate and only use to keep making more items. These are not expected, just appreciated and we wanted to acknowledge that.

The 8.5″x11″ posters are available now.

Everyone has been very cooperative and reasonable with what they take so far, and we really appreciate it! Thanks for letting us help fight this battle.

See the most recent post here.

Susan’s interview in the Vancouver Courier

Photo by Dan Toulgoet

Read Susan’s interview with Cheryl Rossi about The Flag Shop’s involvement in supporting the BC teachers on strike.

 

“Respect Our Teachers” car flags now available

We’re just finishing these up! As Susan said, she gets the first one.

The price is $20.00 each for the public and $10.00 each for teachers.

For simplicity, both these prices include taxes. We will need the “honour” system for the “public/teacher” prices because these cost us $15.00 each to make. The more that the public buys, the more we can make for teachers.

Right now, these are only available in The Flag Shop Vancouver at 1615 Powell Street. You can come by to order, or you can call us at (604) 736-8161 (toll free 1-800-663-8681) to order.

See the most recent post here.

Supporting the public school teachers of BC

We are publicly throwing our support behind BC’s public school teachers who are currently on strike.

We are very busy trying to get this organized, but those of you in BC can join our Facebook group set up for organizing the campaign here. We are also posting updates to our twitter account and our main Facebook page.

We will have a press release as well as other materials soon.

Catch Susan on CBC’s Early Edition tomorrow at 7:20 a.m. on 88.1 FM and 690 AM.

We made the list!

We are #25 on Business in Vancouver’s list of Biggest BC Businesses Owned by Women in 2013!

(And we salute them for not giving into the impulse to keep things alliterative by using the word “broads”).

Khatsahlano! is this weekend

With Khatsahlano, Vancouver’s biggest free music and arts festival coming up on Saturday, July 13th, there’s been some last minute scrambling around the office to get all of their signage out the door. In addition, Susan has been going to press conferences in her role as president of the West 4th BIA.

Here’s a few places she’s been quoted or pictured so far:

We’ll post photos of the festival next week!

Photo from BongoJack Media

The Big Decision episode online

In case you missed it, you can watch our episode of The Big Decision online now.

Click here to see it!

Tonight’s the night! Our episode of The Big Decision airs on CBC at 9 pm.

The Big Decision

It’s finally here. We’re a little nervous.

Join us online at our twitter account @TheFlagShop at 6pm Pacific (9 pm Eastern) tonight as we livetweet our way through it!

Oh, and The Big Decision is running a caption contest for this photo of Arlene and Susan. Submit your best caption to TBD’s facebook or twitter and see if you can win a Save-On-Meats t-shirt!