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Liz Morris is CEO of Carrot-Top Industries in Hillsborough.

Liz Morris is CEO of Carrot-Top Industries in Hillsborough.

Lots of businesses, big and small, look to certain holidays for big sales. Toys and clothing retailers lean heavily on Christmas and Chanukah; flowers and chocolate eye Valentine’s and Mother’s days; candy is all about Halloween; mattress stores have adopted President’s Day. You get the picture.

Since Liz Morris was a kid helping to fill orders in the warehouse, her family’s business has focused on Independence Day. And Veterans Day. Also Memorial Day. In fact, as the company she now runs has expanded its product offerings and grown its distribution, one could argue everyday is Flag Day for her company.

Morris is Chief Executive Officer at Carrot-Top Industries Inc., a company her father started in 1980, in the town of Oak Park, near Chicago. Her father, Dwight Morris, wanted to be an entrepreneur, and originally started Carrot-Top — also his nickname from having bright red hair — as a retailer of several items. Among the products sold were flags, which were mostly going to municipalities. 

Flag sales is a niche business, and back then, dealers were very regional. It could be challenging for a new shop near Chicago to get flags from a manufacturer if it already was doing business with another company that sold flags in Chicago.

Carrot-Top took a different route and began 

doing mail-order marketing, and was one of the first flag distributors to achieve growth through sending catalogs nationwide. The company still provides catalogs, but the Internet has become the primary tool for sales and growth.

In 1987, the company moved to Hillsborough at a facility off Dimmocks Mill Road. Both of Morris’ parents had attended Duke University. They liked the area and knew they wanted to raise their two daughters here. In 1995, Carrot-Top again moved its operations, this time to a 25,000-square-foot space at 328 Elizabeth Brady Road. The company has 27 employees.

Carrot-Top sells flags, banners, matts, street banners, flagpoles, and parts and accessories. 

Dwight Morris retired in 2021. Two years earlier, in 2019, he turned over the CEO title and duties to Liz. It’s a far cry from her days as a teenager working odd jobs at the company with her sister.

“When I was little, I loved helping in the warehouse,” Morris said. “I’ve always wanted to add value and help my father in any way. We send out a lot of catalogs, and, back then, my sister and I would put the address labels on before they went out. I’ve always had fun when I felt like what I was doing contributed to the company’s success.”

After she finished college, Morris wanted to earn experience in a different line of work, so she moved to Charlotte for several years to work for a consulting company. Her dad continued to update Liz on the family business, and letting her know the door was open for her to take over the company. Liz returned to Carrot-Top in 2016. 

Morris and her sister now own the company, but only Liz works onsite, as her sister lives in Seattle, and serves on the company’s board of directors with their father.

Since taking over as CEO, Morris was almost immediately put to the test when Covid-19 forced the company to adjust how its employees would be able to work. During Covid, we moved all employees to work remotely except for our warehouse fulfillment staff. Government entities and schools are among the company’s biggest customers, and with many of those buildings being closed for at least a year, flag sales and banner sales dropped.

Morris said the business had to temporarily change its business model. “Where we would normally be touching our business customers with a catalog and waiting for their orders, those customers were no longer going into their offices. We built scripts and worked to execute call and email campaigns to reach out to our customers where they were. We needed the Customer Service team to pivot from answering questions to asking questions, from reacting to being proactive to fight revenue decline. We also needed to shift our marketing dollars to a more aggressive digital strategy. The team came together and embraced the challenge. Even as a small business, we saw that we could be creative, nimble, and flexible, which was empowering.”

Morris said sales at Carrot-Top are improving, and the company expects soon to be in a growth mode, which is remarkable for an industry that doesn’t see many changes. More than anything, the company has expanded its clientele to areas and groups that are more recently viewing flags as method for representation. What was once mostly limited to flags of countries and states, now more towns and cities are having flags designed and made. Teams and businesses are putting logos on flags and street banners. 

All of the flags sold through Carrot-Top Industries are made in the USA. Morris said, far and away, its biggest seller is the U.S. flag. The company’s website and catalog sells flags in sizes small enough to fit on your desk, to sizes that can be easily seen from miles away. Its competitors are other flag distribution companies and Amazon.

Morris said her company receives many orders from individuals wanting to show their pride, and also gets custom orders. And, as Morris explained, there’s more to consider when ordering a flag than most people realize.

“Flags are very simple, but when you get into the display — primarily commercial poles like what we have in front of our building — it can get very complicated,” she said. “Customers should consider building codes or local ordinances, windspeed, location of the pole in relation to other structures. You also have decisions in terms of cosmetics, where we recommend matching the flagpole finish to your existing hardware. It seems simple on the surface, but thinking through those complexities with our customers is how we bring our experience to bear every day.”

An example of this service was when Carrot-Top worked with the Town of Hillsborough Board of Commissioners when it wanted to install 30 Pride flags throughout downtown. There’s a variety of Pride flag options, some of which have specific meanings.

“We look for opportunities to build a trusted relationship with our customers,” Morris added. “We focus on service, sharing based on our 40 years of experience, and doing right by our customers. Our mission is to honor the American spirit and enhance facilities and events, and we do that by helping our customers find the right products that meet their needs.”

For more information on Carrot-Top Industries, go to https://www.carrot-top.com.

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