Photo courtesy of Dion Cini
- Dion Cini was barred from MLB games for repeatedly hanging "Trump Won" banners at stadiums.
- Cini sells the banners and other Trump merchandise and says sales have surged since the stunts.
- Cini's products are manufactured outside of the US in order to cut costs.
- Visit Insider's homepage for more stories.
The man who was recently barred from all MLB venues for hanging "Trump Won" banners has watched his Trump merchandise business prosper over the last month.
Dion Cini, an avid Donald Trump supporter who runs his online store YugeFlags.com, says the sales of his Trump campaign products have surged since he first dropped a "Trump Won" banner at Yankee Stadium on May 27. He also posted body-camera footage of his stunt to Twitter and YouTube with a watermark advertising his website.
Dropping the banners at the Yankees game and other stadiums after that sparked demand for Cini's products after sales harshly declined following the January 6 capital insurrection.
"My factory can't even keep up with the amount of orders," Cini told Insider. "It went up thousands of percentages because there were no sales, well not really no sales, between January 6 and early June. So sales were just flat for flags."
A viral photo of Cini's stunt at Yankee Stadium, where he and an accomplice hung the flag over the second deck as a fan gave him the middle finger from a lower level, has been valuable marketing for his products. He credits much of his recent success to that photo in particular.
"After the Yankees, the sales just exploded, and I didn't expect it, and the reason why is because of that money shot. That's what I'm always after. I'm always after the money shot," Cini said. "You can't pay for advertising like that. It would cost millions, if not tens of millions of dollars to get that kind of advertising."
"Another thing I've been trying to do is help Trump also get free advertising too by injecting the words 'Trump Won' into the media," he added.
Cini took his stunts to Citi Field, Fenway Park, and Citizens Bank Park before getting a letter from MLB in June saying he is no longer allowed to attend MLB games.
But Cini even found a way to use his banishment for marketing his products. He told his followers on Twitter that if they purchased a banner from YugeFlags.com and posted a video of them hanging it at a sporting event just as he did, then they would get a full refund on their purchase.
One of Cini's followers already followed up on the offer by dropping a "Trump Won" banner during a San Diego Padres game at Petco Park.
-Dion Cini (@dioncini) July 6, 2021
"The secret of flag dropping is not the flag drop, it's the photography," Cini said. "It's all part of the guerilla marketing experience ... I'm also getting phone calls from a lot of people who want me to work on their campaigns or work on their advertising agencies because I figured out an algorithm on how you can get $100 million in advertising for a $10 ticket."
Cini's business originates from a similar stunt at Yankee Stadium in July 2018, when he hung a "Trump 2020" banner during the Yankees' game against the Kansas City Royals. The 2018 stunt even caught Trump's attention, as Cini said Trump reached out to him to encourage him to continue hanging the banners.
"I am a software developer by trade ... I never sold a flag before that ever, I only started selling that because people were like 'wow I like that flag I wish I could have one,'" Cini said. "Then I started selling the flags outside of Trump Tower once a week for three years."
Cini has now turned that stunt into a growing independent business over the past three years. He's found ways not only to get cheap marketing but cheap manufacturing too.
"I use an international factory," Cini said. "Unfortunately, I can't use an American factory because the cost of the manufacturing wouldn't justify the buyers because nobody is going to spend $30 for a three-by-five flag, and that's what I'd have to charge."