The Confederate battle flag may have been lowered over the Alabama Capitol grounds in Montgomery, but nearly 200 miles away in the northern Alabama city of Huntsville, sales of the southern cross continue to go up.

“We are getting absolutely swamped,” Belinda Kennedy, owner of Alabama Flag & Banner, recently told AL.com. “It’s let up a little, but what we’re finding is that people are still wanting the really pretty sewn (flags), the ones that are more like a piece of art with the sewn stripes and the appliqué stars. Those are really labor intensive and it takes a long time. We’re still being flooded with orders for those. We’re getting tons of overseas orders. We’re going as fast as we can.”

Last month, Kennedy promised that her store would continue making and selling the flags, despite growing opposition to their public display in the wake of the racially-motivated mass murder of nine black people inside a historically black church in Charleston, South Carolina. 

It’s proven to be a lucrative decision.  

“We are filling wholesale orders left and right – people who have been in the flag business for 50 years and they can’t find it,” she said. 

Wayne Willingham is dealing with the same degree of demand.

Willingham, Commander of the Sons of Confederate Veterans Thomas Jefferson Denny Camp 1442 in nearby Cullman County, Alabama, said Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley’s decision to remove the flag from the Heart of Dixie’s Capitol grounds last month has brought brisk sales of Confederate battle flags at the West Point, Alabama store he owns.

“I get calls every day from people wanting to know if we have them,” Willingham told the Cullman Times.

On Saturday, Willingham’s organization hosted a southern heritage rally on the Cullman County courthouse steps that was attended by more than 100 people, Confederate battle flags in tow.  

Mike Eddy, adjutant of the Thomas Jefferson Denny Camp, said Bentley’s decision to remove the flags has actually boosted membership in the local chapter.

“Just two years ago we had five members. We now have over 30 and the inquiries about membership are continuing to come in,” Eddy said. “Our national office is overrun with requests for flags and books and we’ve had to put in a robo call system to help out. We’re three weeks behind on the orders people are making.”