A teardrop flag is a curved fibreglass pole with a printed polyester skin sleeved onto it. It swivels with the wind so it always reads. We print the skins here and match the base to where it is standing.
A teardrop flag is a tall curved advertising flag, shaped a bit like a raindrop on its side, held taut on a sectional pole. The skin is knitted polyester, sleeved over the pole and pegged at the bottom so it stays under tension rather than flapping loose. Feather flags and bow banners are the same hardware with a different outline. All of them are sold by overall height, pole included.
Made by Melbourne Trade Signs, a large-format print and signage company on Unit 6/43 Orbis Drive, Ravenhall VIC 3023, in Melbourne’s west. Printed in-house and installed Australia-wide. Phone 0415 743 691.
A note on names, because every supplier uses a different one: teardrop flags, feather flags, bow flags and beach flags all describe the same family of printed outdoor flag on a flexible pole. The difference is the shape of the sail — a teardrop curves back to the pole at the bottom, a feather runs straight and tall, a bow flag bellies out. We print all of them on the same fabric with the same pole and base options, so order by the shape you want rather than the word.
What they do well is announce a location from a distance, in colour, without needing a wall to fix to. They move, and movement catches an eye that a static sign does not. What they do badly is fine print. Anything below about 100 mm of type disappears from a moving car, so a flag carries a logo and three or four words and nothing more. Detail belongs on an A-frame at the door.
Skins are printed and sewn at our Orbis Drive workshop in Ravenhall, and we stock the poles and bases rather than drop-shipping them, so a kit gets assembled and checked before it goes out. One flag is a fine order and so is fifty for a franchise rollout. If you already own poles, we print skins alone, which is most of the cost gone.
Two numbers matter when ordering: the overall height including the pole, and the print area on the skin itself. They are not the same, and the difference catches people out.
| Item | Standard | Detail | Where it suits |
|---|---|---|---|
| Small | About 2.4 m overall | Roughly 600 × 1700 mm printed | Indoors, low awnings, shop entries and market stalls |
| Medium | About 3.4 m overall | Roughly 700 × 2400 mm printed | The everyday pick for open homes and sports grounds |
| Large | About 4.5 m overall | Roughly 800 × 3300 mm printed | Roadside frontage, and anywhere it competes with other signs |
| Fabric | Knitted polyester, around 110 gsm | Light, open weave, quick drying | Any outdoor flag. Heavier cloth simply will not fly |
| Dye sublimation | Shows through at roughly 80 per cent on the reverse | Single-sided work where a soft mirror image is acceptable | |
| Pole | Sectional fibreglass over aluminium | Swivel joint at the top section | Every kit. The fibreglass tip is what lets it bend and recover |
| Outdoor life | Typically six to eighteen months | Shorter on a full-sun frontage | Permanent installs. Rotate two skins to double that |
Overall height includes the base. Print height does not, so a 3.4 m flag carries about 2.4 m of graphic. Measure your ceiling or awning clearance before ordering, and allow the pole to lean slightly under load.
The flag itself is the easy part. Nearly every decision worth making is about how it is anchored and whether the reverse side needs to read the right way around.
A steel spike driven into grass or soft ground, with a cup on top that the pole drops into. It is the most stable option there is, costs the least, and holds a large flag through weather that would walk a cross base across a car park. Useless on concrete.
A folding steel X that sits flat on hard ground. Fine for indoor use and for sheltered footpaths. Outdoors it needs weight on it, and a sandbag or a couple of pavers over the arms is the difference between a flag that stays put and one that goes for a walk.
A hollow plastic disc filled on site. Empty it weighs almost nothing, which is the point when you are carrying six of them. Filled it holds a medium flag in ordinary conditions. Do not leave one full through a Melbourne winter, because ice splits the moulding.
An angled bracket screwed to a facade or a fence post, holding the pole out at roughly 45 degrees. This is how you get a flag onto a shopfront with no footpath rights, and it takes the flag out of reach of anyone inclined to take it home.
A flat steel plate that a wheel parks on, with the pole socket at the edge. Handy at markets, sports grounds and open homes where there is nothing else to anchor to. It is only ever as steady as the vehicle, so nobody moves the car while the flag is up.
One pass through the printer. The image shows through the open knit at about 80 per cent strength on the back, mirrored. For a logo it usually reads fine. For text it reads backwards, which some people never notice and others cannot look past.
Two separate skins sewn back to back with a blockout liner between them. Both faces read correctly and the colour is stronger from either side. It roughly doubles the fabric cost and adds weight, so the flag needs a touch more breeze to fly properly.
Hardware outlasts artwork. Poles and bases will do several seasons, while a skin fades and frays. Send us a pole model or the measurements of the old skin and we print a new one to fit. Clubs often keep one kit and swap skins between sponsors each year.
Nurseries, tyre shops, caravan sales and anything else set back from a main road. A row of flags along the boundary reads as a single moving line at 60 km/h, which no static sign matches. Large flags and ground spikes if there is soil, car feet if there is not. Order two sets and rotate them, because constant sun on a western frontage is what finishes a skin.
Saturday morning work. Flags go in the nature strip on a spike, come out at midday, and live in the boot in between. Medium is the right height. Agencies usually run generic branded flags rather than property-specific ones, which means the same six kits cover the whole weekend. Keep a spare skin, because a pole dropped on a driveway will tear a hem.
Finals days, fun runs, junior carnivals and the sponsor row along a boundary fence. Grass means ground spikes, which is the easy scenario, and a spike costs less than any other base. Clubs tend to buy hardware once and reprint skins as sponsors come and go. We keep the artwork on file, so a repeat order matches the flags already in the shed rather than sitting slightly off colour beside them.
A promotion running across twenty stores where every site needs the same flag but a different base, because one has a lawn and the next has a loading dock. We pack per site with the right base in each carton and label them, so a store manager opens one box and finds a complete kit rather than half of one.
Teardrop artwork is read at speed, usually side-on and often partly furled. That changes what works. Big shapes and strong colour contrast survive it. Fine detail does not.
A logo file and a phone number is enough to start. We lay it out to the flag shape, mark the pole sleeve and safe area, and send a proof showing how it reads furled as well as flat.
Skins are sublimated, cut and hemmed on site at Ravenhall, and poles come off our own shelf, so nothing waits on an importer. Give us the date you need them standing and we will tell you straight whether it works. Collect from Ravenhall in business hours, delivered around Melbourne and regional Victoria, or freighted interstate. Flag kits travel well because the poles break down short.
A properly anchored flag is comfortable in an ordinary breeze and should be taken down when it starts gusting hard.
The fibreglass tip is designed to bend well past what looks alarming and spring back. What fails first is almost never the pole, it is the anchoring: a cross base with no weight on it, or a water base half filled. Large flags catch far more wind than medium ones. If a site is genuinely exposed, run medium flags on spikes rather than one large flag on a plate.
Only if the flag has readable text and traffic passes it from both directions. Otherwise single-sided is the better buy.
Single-sided print bleeds through the knit at roughly 80 per cent, mirrored. A logo mark reads perfectly well like that. Words do not, and reversed text looks like an error to anyone who notices. Double-sided uses two skins with a blockout layer between, so it costs close to twice as much and needs slightly more breeze to fly cleanly.
Grass or soil takes a ground spike, hard ground takes a cross base with weight, and a vehicle takes a car foot.
The spike is the strongest and the cheapest, so use it wherever the ground allows. On concrete, a cross base alone is not enough outdoors, and it needs a sandbag or pavers. Water bases suit jobs where you carry them in empty and fill on arrival. Wall brackets are the answer for a shopfront with no usable footpath.
Yes, and if you already own the hardware it is the sensible way to order.
We need to know the pole kit, either by brand and model or by measuring the old skin along the leading curve and across the bottom. Sleeve widths and curve profiles vary between manufacturers, so a skin cut for one kit can be too tight to sleeve on another. Send a photo of the pole tip and the old flag laid flat and we will work it out.
Six to eighteen months is the honest range for a flag left standing, and sun exposure decides where in that range it lands.
A flag put up for weekends and stored dry can look good for years. One that lives on a western frontage through a Melbourne summer will show fading in reds and oranges first, and fraying at the trailing edge where it flogs in the wind. Bringing flags in overnight roughly doubles their life, which most people cannot be bothered doing and should.
Wash them, yes. Iron them directly, no.
Sleeve the skin off the pole, wash cold on a gentle cycle with mild detergent and hang it to dry out of the sun. Sublimated dye is part of the fibre, so it does not wash out. A hot iron on the face can glaze or scorch polyester permanently. If creases bother you, use a steamer or simply let the flag fly for half an hour, because tension and airflow sort it out.
Still deciding? See our sign and banner sizes guide.
The fence-mounted option for windy sites. Perforated PVC lets air through, so it holds where a solid banner or a flag would strain against its fixings.
See the detail →The indoor counterpart. Same idea of portable branding you can carry in one hand, but with a flat panel and room for actual detail and text.
See the detail →What goes at the door once a flag has brought someone across the road. Footpath frames take the detail that will not fit on a flying flag.
See the detail →Browse the full list on our A–Z of everything we print, or see how this fits into signage in Melbourne.
Tell us the height, the quantity and what the ground is like where they are going. We will quote inside two business hours.