By Leslie Kelly
It’s a simple little thing ­— the Bungee Flag. Anybody could have come up with it. But Gig Harbor entrepreneur Brian Lentz is the one who did.
Lentz, who had a 20-year career in the Navy and retired in 2007 as a submarine chief torpedo man, had been in the construction trades prior to joining the Navy in February 1987.
He was a carpenter and built homes. And while still in the Navy, he took on some extra weekend work helping build a deck on a friend’s home.
As he was finishing up, he loaded the extra lumber back on his truck and tied it together with a bungee cord. He then attached a red plastic flag to it.
A few years later when he was still using the contraption, Lentz thought to himself, “Maybe I have something, here.”
Indeed he did. And after retiring from the Navy, Lentz went back to work back in construction.
He and a silent partner went to work making 5,000 of the Bungee Flags and filed the paperwork to patten the product, an 18 inch by 18 inch fire-engine-red flag made with Raptor Weave fabric attached to a 48mm bungee cord with a Carabiner clip at the end to secure it.
“Literally, I went knocking on doors with the Bungee Flags in hand,” said Lentz. “I went all across the Kitsap Peninsula, at lumber yards, hardware stores and anywhere else I could think of.”
He tried to get his product in Home Depot, and at first was met with some resistance.
“The folks in Seattle told me they’d take it to corporate, but they didn’t,” he said. “That’s when we hired a professional marketing person.”
Within a few months, Home Depot put it in a limited number of stores. That was February of this year. It’s now in all 2,200 Home Depot stores, and an additional 6,000 lumber yards and warehouses throughout the county.
The product sells for $4.88 to $5.99 depending on the location.
Lentz said he thinks his flag has done well because it’s so practical.
“When you think about it, my competition is the plastic thing that the lumber yards give away for free,” he said. “It’s hard to compete with free. But my flag is reusable over and over and is environmentally friendly. And contractors and builders like that.”
Since the product’s inception, Lentz has come to notice many flimsy, plastic squares attached to the back of protruding loads and has seen how many end up littering the highways in Western Washington. Lentz has determined he can cut down on the amount of plastic waste from these construction flags through his durable, re-usable option.
“Just as people are cutting down on the use of plastic grocery bags by taking re-usable bags into the stores with them, workers can use the Bungee Flag countless times,” he said.
He’s convinced that the reason his product is doing so well, is that before him, there wasn’t a flag to buy.
“Lumber yards were giving something away that they could have been making money off of,” he said. “I simply put one on the shelf.”
He admits many people have told him,”Why didn’t I think of that?”
“I hear that all the time,” he said. “And, really, it happened by mistake with me. I was just looking for a way to keep that lumber on the truck.”
His career in the Navy took him to training in Great Lakes, Ill., submarine school in Connecticut, torpedo school in Florida, assignments on the USS John C. Calhoun, the USS Alaska and the USS Ohio.
His career in the Navy happened almost by accident.
Lentz grew up in Virginia and after high school drove across county to live in California with his sister.
“I’d been building houses and heard business was better on the West Coast,” he said. “So I went to check it out.”
After a short time, work declined and he knew he had to find something else to do.
“I woke up one morning and said, ‘I’m going to join the Navy.’”
His last assignments were in the Bremerton/Bangor/Keyport area and he decided to retire here. Knowing the home building business, it was a natural for him to return to it.
After some less than stellar economic hard times, and having a couple of places he was working for go under, he decided it was time for the Bungee Flag to make its debut.
His work as an inventor hasn’t stopped. He’s looking into adding a light to the Bungee Flag so that it can be seen at night as is required by law, he said.
And he’s just getting his organic fertilizer on the market under the name of Green Belt Organics.
“I guess I’m the kind of guy who’s willing to stick my neck out there and try new things,” he said. “If I fail, I fail. But if I don’t, it’s pure success.”
And success has come, he said. Lentz’s company is making millions with retail partners such as True Value, Sherwin Williams, and Orgill Distribution, as well as Home Depot stores across the country.
The Bungee Flag also is now carried in the UK, Canada, Guam, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands.
To contact Lentz, email brian.lentz@thebungeeflag.com or go to www.thebungeeflag.com.