Striking Balance Between Opportunity, Responsibility.

BUSINESS owners across the United States are quickly changing gears to meet the demand for patriotic products as the country continues to heal and express its deep feelings for the American way of life.

John Smith founded Clever Covers in Orlando, Fin., in 1996. The business produces decorative plastic hubcap covers printed with college team insignia. Smith chose the college sports market because the market is huge -- an estimated $2.7 billion in sales annually -- and the licenses are cheap, about $1,000 each compared to about $50,000 for an NFL team license.

Smith and his three new employees had pre-sold almost 3,000 sets of custom hubcap covers for the fall college football season. All his plans changed when the planes crashed into the Pentagon and the World Trade Center.

Though sales looked temporarily gloomy for college team merchandise, many of Smith's customers have asked for American flag hubcap covers. So, he's busy making them.

Smith began making 1,000 sets of "God Bless America" wheel covers two weeks ago and already has orders for 250 sets.

Smith admits some folks may criticize him for profiting from a tragedy. But he said, "taking advantage (of a tragedy) is when you sell a $2 gallon of gas for $6. This is something people are asking for. People want to buy these hubcap covers. There is a demand out there, and I can meet it."

A set of four covers sells for $60 retail. He plans to donate 10 percent of sales to charities benefiting rescue workers and their families.

"The wheel is an overlooked piece of real estate, and I'm just blessed that I thought of it first," says Smith.

Big business

Tom Jordan, owner of U.S. Flag and Flagpole in Beaumont, Texas, says he used to run a very small business, that is, "until last (month)."

Since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Jordan's staff of nine has ballooned to 25. He has been getting hundreds of messages in a matter of hours requesting flags.

The tiny company used to sell 100 or 150 flags a week. One week last month, they sold over one million flags to Americans eager to express their patriotic feelings in the wake of the tragedy.

"When that thing hit," he said, "I told everybody here -- business is fixin' to pick up." But even so, the demand for flags has been beyond his wildest dreams.

Jordan said orders started to flood in just 30 minutes after the attacks were reported, and the phones haven't stopped ringing. "We're taking about 20 orders a minute," said Jordan, who has issued a first-come, first-served policy on flag sales, and last week was just starting to fulfill orders from the week before.

"I can sell as many poles as I can get my hands on," says Jordan. "There are thousands of orders in that I can't even fill."

U.S. Flag and Flagpole sells both flags and flagpoles, but their specialty is building really, really tall flagpoles -- in fact, last month they just finished building the world's tallest flagpole in the United Arab Emirates, a project Jordan says he was a lot prouder of before the events of Sept. 11.

Jordan said he has no idea how much money he'll make on the flags, which start at 26 cents for a small one. His full-time bookkeeper and two temporary bookkeepers, hired last week, have not been able to keep up with the orders. Typically, the company posts annual revenue of about $2 million.

Small firms take a hit

In other news: The massive disaster that struck New York affected businesses around the world, but the effects have been devastating for many small companies in Manhattan.

Right after the attack, the U.S. Small Business Administration, which has experience helping communities recover after earthquakes, floods and hurricanes, set up two crisis centers for business owners to sign up for help from several relief agencies in one place.

We met a graphic designer and his roommate, a woman who owns a nail salon; two limousine company owners, who said business has been at a virtual standstill; and a clothing designer left with half-finished dresses and no idea how to recover the losses.

Erica, who declined to give her last name, owns a cosmetics company. She was waiting to apply for a loan. She said she could not get into her office at 27 Park Place, near the site of the former World Trade Center.

"They say this is a one-stop shop," said Erica, "but there's nothing on the shelves. It's not a solution-based process, and that really annoys me. We are given the same forms and have to go through the same process they normally have."

Answering these frustrations, Herb Mitchell, head of the SBA's disaster relief effort, said the agency was doing everything, it could to process applications quickly. Those businesses that do not qualify for working capital loans would be referred to the right agencies for other types of aid.

No one knows yet how $40 billion in federal funds made available by Congress will be apportioned to the small businesses affected by the attack.

The SBA approved 18 loans within a week following the Sept. 11 disaster for a total of $1.6 million, and agency officials had processed a total of 195 applications; The Empire State Development Commission estimates that more than 3,000 businesses are affected by the "frozen zone," the downtown Manhattan area still off-limits due to ongoing investigations and cleanup efforts. The overall cleanup effort is expected to last six months or more, according to government officials.

Reporting by Sarah Prior. Jane Applegate is the author of "201 Great Ideas for Your Small Business," and is CEO of SBTV.com, a multimedia site providing small-business resources.