Business Spotlight: Billow’s believes in keeping it local

Dennis Billow deals with customers of his embroidery and screen printing shop much the same way he treats his friends. This is because he sees his customers as more than clients. They are his friends, too.

“I have a very old-school business philosophy,” said Billow, owner of Billow’s Custom Embroidery and Screen Printing. “I still seal a contract with a hand shake.”

Billow takes pride in the way his business has been run in the nearly 14 years he has operated it in Carson City. He has forged lasting relationships with clients that have translated not only into repeat business, but a loyalty which he naturally reciprocates.

This relationship is best demonstrated in the partnership, and the friendships, Billow has forged with the Carson City Sheriff’s Office, which has been a regular and loyal client for more than 10 years.

“The deputies that come in here are more friends than they are customers,” Billow said. “They know they can get a hold of me if they need something.”

Billow related a story of a deputy on the gang unit who got a huge tear in the belly of his uniform while climbing over a fence during a foot pursuit. Afterward, the deputy called Billow at 3 a.m. and asked if he could repair the damage to the uniform before the next shift. Billow got the job done so the deputy could get back to work.

In fact, the Billows — Dennis and his wife, Char — are known to express their appreciation to the job the first-responders of the sheriff’s office do by hosting an annual barbecue in their honor.

The event is not about the business that the two entities do together, Billow stressed, but rather about residents (the Billows) showing how much they appreciate the officers’ commitment to protect and serve the community.

It’s about neighbors caring about one another.

He said the barbecue is a place where the first-responders can feel safe and comfortable being themselves when out of uniform.

But Billow emphasized that the way he treats his clients in the sheriff’s office is how he treats all of his customers.

“My philosophy is anybody who walks through the door, I’m going to treat them the same way,” he said.

Billow also believes strongly in promoting local businesses in Carson City. It’s about keeping things local, and staying local, too, he said.

“Eighty percent of my clientele are family-owned and operated companies (in Carson City), like myself,” he said. “I have my own inner network. I network with the businesses I work for.”

This means all of his referrals for other businesses stay local, too.
“You don’t need to leave Carson City to get everything done,” Billow said. “I don’t leave here. Ninety-five percent of everything I do, I do in Carson. I take buying locally to heart.”

Billow’s Custom Embroidery and Screen Printing, located in a 1,500 square-foot retail space at 1840 E. William Street #1 in the Napa Auto Care shopping center, offers a diverse service to meet the needs of organizations and individuals alike, Billow said.

He can produce items in large quantities, or made to order products that are individual and one of a kind. His business specializes in manufacturing designs for garments such as uniforms, t-shirts, hats, patches, and related products.

Billow has 39 years of experience in the textile industry, having got his start in screen printing while in high school.

“I bounced around to several screen printers, learning as much as I could,” he said.

His embroidery and screen printing business was founded in Southern California before he and Char moved to Northern Nevada.

Billow describes screen printing as a process of adding colorful designs to fabric.

“It’s an awesome medium originally designed for t-shirts,” he said. “It’s using high-tech stencils.”

Embroidery is “taking thread and putting it on top of thread to create a design,” Billow said.

Through a series of thread layers, embroidery takes on a life of its own, full of color, texture and depth.

Billow said his embroidery process involves re-creating a design using a digitizing program, then transferring that data to his automated machine that stitches the design together onto other fabric.

Billow’s Custom Embroidery and Screen Printing is open Monday through Friday from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m.