It was Christmas Eve, and Peter Ellis was enjoying the holiday with his wife and child when the phone rang.

It was a client calling about a problem that wasn’t Ellis’s responsibility to fix. He and partner Dennis Driscoll at DIF Design in Springfield had created the client’s Web site and other marketing materials, but this trouble should have been deferred to the Web site hosting company.

But Ellis dropped everything and worked for three hours until it was resolved. “I believe it was the best Christmas present they got that year,” he said.

Treating clients like family and caring about their needs is a mission that Ellis and Driscoll take seriously.

Their business life revolves around establishing strong relationships with start-ups and small businesses and providing them with the marketing tools they need to compete with corporate giants. They also have strived to change the stigma that price determines the quality of a product.

For the past five years, Ellis, who is the creative director at DIF Design, Driscoll, and their graphic designer have focused on getting to know their clients and their businesses on a level unheard of in this day and age.

It’s a proven formula for success, and DIF Design was recently named the anchor tenant in the Springfield Business Incubator within the Andrew M. Scibelli Enterprise Center in the Springfield Technical Community College Technology Park.

“We provide services to 70% of the clients in the building,” said Ellis, whose company’s offerings range from Web site and logo design to online promotions, search engine optimization, no-sales advertising, and HTML campaigns.

Creating Web sites for any company is an art form, but when they are start-ups and must compete with larger firms, it takes finesse to make them appear credible.

“Someone once told me that power perceived is power achieved,” Ellis said. “It’s a principle I apply. I’m dealing with small businesses, and I try to eliminate their online credibility issues by making a three-person company seem as large as a Fortune 500 company.”

He explains there is no deception involved. Instead, he’s just zoning in on a critical ingredient that most small businesses lack — good marketing.

“You can’t have an effective campaign without proper presentation,” Ellis said. “Today, without a logo and Web site, a business is not credible.”

There is no price list on DIF’ Design’s Web site, and there never will be, as both Ellis and Driscoll are invested in helping new companies get off the ground.

“We sit with clients and look at what they have and what we can design for them, then provide them with a game plan on how to promote their business,” Ellis said.

In Good Company

When a new client calls, Ellis spends several hours researching the type of business they operate, the history of the company, their size, and exactly what they do before he sets up a meeting.

“I need to learn about their trade, their competition, and the end expectations of their buyers — what type of verbage their customers are looking for,” he said. “In the long run, it saves so much time.”

Driscoll’s role is functional. Systems have always been his game, and he delights in rising to the challenge of bending them to the needs of the client, sometimes accomplished in an unorthodox manner.

When the partners finally meet the client, they talk about what the business needs to be competitive. Ellis focuses on creativity, while Driscoll discusses and handles technical complexities.

“We don’t have any cookie-cutter templates. We take a custom approach whether we are designing a billboard, business cards, a full-page catalog, or a Web site,” Ellis said. He also takes pride in the fact that DIF Design doesn’t outsource any work.

“But the most important thing is the relationship we have with our customers,” Ellis said. “I am open and up front and treat people how I would like to be treated. Their business is their life. I don’t want to tell them how to live that life, but if I can, I tell them how to live it better.”

Some people have no idea what they want and grant Ellis and Driscoll total freedom, while others tell them exactly how something should look. They have learned from experience that neither extreme works well, and it’s critical to educate their clients.

“I never want to make someone’s business my own,” Ellis said, referring to the offer he frequently gets to create a firm’s identity. “A small business is the owner’s baby. It’s part of their heart.”

DCD Consulting was established by Driscoll in April 2004 as a business which specialized in digital imaging and photo manipulation for professional photographers across the nation.

In August 2004, Driscoll brought Ellis on as a partner. When an artist asked for help with a Web site, Ellis zoomed in on the market. At the time, when Web sites were not that common. “I saw a whole other opportunity,” he said.

By early 2005, the company had split into two entities — Digital Imaging Firm for its artists and DIF Design, which offers a broad spectrum of affordable graphic and Web-design services, as well as one-on-one marketing consulting. They changed the name because “people thought we were financial consultants,” Ellis said.

One of the cornerstones of their success is Ellis’s approach to marketing, grounded in relationships that are so close that clients call him for advice about where to eat when they want a great meal, what type of home they should purchase, and other things that have nothing to do with DIF Design’s services.

“When they come here, they are not just getting a product. They are entering into a relationship,” he said. “I try to offer them as much support as I can. That’s how this country began. Businesses were built on strong relationships, and history shows that after the Great Depression, the ones that survived and became the strongest did so because they stuck together and supported their customers.”

To that end, he never misses the opportunity to send holiday and birthday cards to clients and also calls them on a frequent basis simply to check in and see how they are faring.

“I go the extra mile and a half,” he said.

His ideology and beliefs about respect, responsibility, and relationships that are at the core of DIF Design were cemented during a four- year stint in the seminary.

Providing support is not enough for Ellis, however. He feels a strong sense of duty to help his clients get the information they need to grow. It’s no easy task, because staying current with changing laws and regulations, leases, loan information, and more can be daunting.

During his five years with DIF Design, Ellis has worked with many businesses and start-ups whose owners ask him an endless stream of questions. He has told them there are non-profit agencies ready to help as well as industry peers who are happy to share their experience and expertise.

“But the owners have told me they just don’t have the time to look for that kind of help,” Ellis said.

It’s also his belief that businesses need to take a proactive stance and do their part to promote economic growth. He spent about a long time thinking about the best way to solve these problems before giving birth to a new online networking Web site.

GreenSpringfield, which was launched June 1, operates in a manner similar to Facebook and has three purposes. It is a social network where members can post their profiles and blog with each other, it connects business people to other professionals who can help them by sharing information and answering questions, and it’s home to a calendar of business and environmental events.

The purpose is not only economic impact, but environmental growth. Members can apply for grants to ‘green’ their business, which are funded by the site’s sponsors.

Greatest Hits

Ellis believes GreenSpringfield makes sense. “We are a business incubator here, yet I see people daily who have no clue there is help available to them. There are barriers to getting information and knowledge, and I know first-hand how important it to success to surround yourself with people you can rely upon for support,” he said.

“There are so many people with information and knowledge who can’t wait to share it,” he said. “Not only do we need each other, it’s a way to give back to the community.”

And to forge strong relationships that are sincere, caring, and honest — 24 hours a day.