Father's advice sets tone for design firm

The year was 1999.

Mike Kitson had been involved in the ownership of Reno-based On-Call Graphics Inc.

for something over five years.

Things were going well so well, in fact, that he found time to ponder some of the deeper questions of business and life.

Such as these: How hard do you need to run? And for how long? Turning to his father, Steve Kitson, a successful excavation contractor in Carson City, the younger Kitson asked, "How do you know when you have enough?" His father's advice "Work with people you like" didn't address the question directly.

But the words pointed the son in a direction that has proven equally successful and far more satisfying.

Work with people you like.

That didn't include a client of On-Call Graphics, the sort of guy who shows up at closing time with a job that always needs to be done yesterday, the sort of guy who causes employees' hearts to sink when they see his car pull into the lot.

Kitson fired the customer, telling him to take his $7,000 a month in business elsewhere.

"When we let this client go, the whole atmosphere in the office changed," Kitson recalled the other day.

Instead of chasing every customer who could bring some work into On-Call Graphics, the company got picky.

"We just picked the clients who wanted creative stuff," Kitson said.

"It's not about money any more." To Kitson's surprise, the decision to turn away customers didn't send the company's revenues into a free fall.

Anything but.

"When I turned someone away, someone better came along," he said.

And quite a few of the customers who balked at the company's prices $125 an hour came back after comparing services and prices elsewhere.

"We're not cheap, but we give great value," Kitson said.

"When they come back, they're our clients forever." The 10-year-old company, which operated out of a couple of smaller spaces in the shadow of the Reno Hilton, moved with its five fulltime employees to 3,500 square feet at Mill and Telegraph in 2001.

With the new location's higher visibility, On-Call Graphics draws a fair amount of walk-in business typically, a customer a day and those customers end up spending about $500 each.

Those walk-in customers, like the rest of On-Call Graphic's list of nearly 500 active clients, come to the company for services that range from design of a corporate logo to short-run digital printing to creation of vinyl signs to design of a corporate Web site.

A journalism graduate of the University of Nevada, Reno, the 33-year-old Kitson launched On-Call Graphics with a partner in January 1993.

Kitson became the sole owner in early 2000.

The company' most serious trial came when a 1997 flood destroyed one of the company's previous locations.

The flood, Kitson said, proved a blessing because he had the choice to leave the business entirely.

In deciding to start over, Kitson committed himself anew to his desire to do top-quality work.

And that trail eventually led him to that all-important talk with his father.

While focusing on their work with people they like, the employees of On-Call Graphics also are deeply involved in education of the folks who follow in their footsteps.

The company has provided 24 internships during its 10 years in business, and nearly all its staff began work as interns from UNR and Truckee Meadows Community College.

Before long, Kitson hopes the staff particularly Trace Geil, his right-hand person in the business no longer needs him around.

Already, Kitson has worked as part of a group of young northern Nevada entrepreneurs that have published four books of business advice under the imprint of World View Publishing and is involved with coaching other entrepreneurs.

But the advice of his father sticks with Kitson, no matter where his entrepreneurial instincts lead him.

"All my values," Kitson said, "come from him."