Unflagging Demand for Poster Overwhelms Company

The posters weren’t supposed to be a big deal, just a little something patriotic for local clients.

But now a shipment is on its way to the White House. Celebrities are walking in to ask for copies. And Capitol Records is calling.

At Westlake Village-based Weiser Litho, company President Paula Weiser has hardly slept. Her hands are sore with paper cuts. The phone is ringing off the hook and e-mails average 100 an hour. And the 19 staff members are having trouble handling thousands of walk-ins a day.

What everyone wants is a disarmingly simple 17- by 22-inch print of a rippling American flag with the words “United We Stand” in regal black-and-white lettering. For anyone who asks, the first three copies are free. A $1 donation is requested for each one after that.

Proceeds, already nearing $10,000, go to disaster relief efforts.

Weiser, 36, decided to create the poster two days after the terrorist attacks.

“Our clients were saying, ‘Oh, we can’t find any flags anywhere; they’re all sold out,’ ” she said. “I just thought it would be a nice gesture.”

On a whim, she called her creative director, Thomas Nance, while driving back from a meeting in Ventura and asked him to whip something together. By the time she got back to the office, Nance and his team had come up with a design. Two hours later it was rolling off the press.

The first run was 5,000 copies.

But Weiser had greatly underestimated the demand. Within hours, a customer had put out word on the Internet. Then the phone began ringing. CNN, Time and Newsweek have paid visits. And the posters have become a national--perhaps international--phenomenon.

More than 65,000 copies have been printed and another 35,000 are set to run by early next week. Orders have come from every state in the nation except Hawaii, and from well-wishers in Italy, England, Germany and South Korea.

Actor Gary Sinese stopped in and picked up several. So did television reptile wrangler Jules Sylvester. DreamWorks, Paramount and Warner Bros. have placed orders. So have police departments from Simi Valley to the East Coast.

Some of those who have dropped by knew victims of the attacks, Weiser said. They bring pictures, tell stories.

“For days, there wasn’t a dry eye in the house,” she said. “It was an emotional roller coaster.”

Meanwhile, the poster has been slated for the cover of a benefit CD that Capitol Records plans to put out this fall.

“When I started putting the concept together for the record I decided to call it ‘United We Stand,’ ” said Cheryl Pawelski at EMI-Capitol Music.

“When I walked into the office that morning I saw a poster behind the receptionist that said the same thing. It was exactly what I wanted to capture.”

In terms of sheer product volume, Weiser has handled bigger jobs before. In addition to small businesses, the 1,000 clients in her database include corporate giants such as Amgen and Disney.

But symbolically, what began as a little project has taken on great weight.

“We had no idea what the scope of it would be,” Weiser admits. She has hired three temps to help answer phones beginning Monday.