A couple of years ago, Dennis and Sherryl Wilkinson decided it was time to sell their awards-and-recognition shop. A community staple in Santa Rosa, California since 1991, D&S Awards (which stands for Dennis and Sherryl) was their baby, but they were ready to move on.

Passing the Torch at D&S Awards

As the Santa Rosa Awards-and-Recognition Shop Changes Hands, We Look at Where It Started and Where It’s Going.

By: Barbara Platts

(Originally printed in the September/October 2024 issue of Insights.)

A couple of years ago, Dennis and Sherryl Wilkinson   decided it was time to sell their awards-and-recognition shop. A community staple in Santa Rosa, California since 1991, D&S Awards (which stands for Dennis and Sherryl) was their baby, but they were ready to move on.

“We aren’t getting any younger,” Dennis says about the decision. “We’ve been doing this a long time, and it’s time to kick back and play with the grandkids, our cars, the dogs, and our cat. It’s time to do other stuff.”

The couple hired a broker who tried to sell their shop for a year, but no buyer was a fit. Dennis says it was probably due to the nature of their business. It would’ve been nearly impossible for someone to come in and be able to run an awards shop on day one.

“First, you have to know the customers. Then you have to know what’s available in the industry. You have to know how to create it, how to run the software,” he says. “You can’t just buy it and hire someone to run it. That’s why it was really difficult to sell, because it’s a hands-on mom-and-pop type business.”

Dennis started D&S Awards from his garage in the early ’90s. He was still working the swing shift as a diesel mechanic in the afternoons, so he spent the mornings making awards. By 1993, the business had grown too big for his garage, so he rented a 2,000-square-foot shop and warehouse, which still houses the business today.

 From the early years, D&S Awards solidified itself in the community. Dennis says that wasn’t by accident. He and Sherryl had three kids, and they were very involved in all their field trips, after-school sports, Scouts, and more.

 “My kids stopped going to the store with me because I couldn’t go anywhere without being stopped by someone who wanted to chat,” he says.

Dennis's involvement in the community, as well as his quality service and offerings at D&S Awards, brought him repeat customers, many who have returned to the shop for decades. One customer like this was Matt Barrington’s father, Gary. He started a business, coincidentally in his garage, in the 1990s, making utility test equipment for the energy sector. There was a specific metal panel component needed for a custom product that D&S Awards would laser etch and hand paint. When Gary passed away in 2020, Matt took over his business and continued to go to Dennis for that component.

 Late in October 2023, Matt came in to talk about his order, and Dennis told him he was selling his business.

“He stopped in his tracks, worried about who was going to make his panels,” Dennis recalls.

“Dennis said, ‘Maybe you guys could buy it,’” Matt recalls. “One thing led to another, and here we are.”

 Dennis recalls that Matt was the one who came up with the idea to purchase. Either way, an offer was put on the table within a couple of weeks, and Matt and his wife, Nichole, became the new owners of D&S Awards on January 2, 2024.

On-the-Job Training

Deciding to purchase D&S Awards was a venture into something new for Matt and Nichole. The Santa Rosa natives and parents of two have never worked in the personalization industry before, but both are familiar with sales and customer relations. Along with running his father’s business, Matt has spent 30 years as an IT architect, and Nichole was a registered dental assistant for 17 years (coincidentally, so was Sherryl before joining her husband full-time at D&S Awards).

The new owners, Matt and Nichole Barrington.

Although Matt likened the first nine months at D&S Awards to drinking from a fire hose, he and Nichole are both enjoying being immersed in a new industry. Plus, they still have help from the Wilkinson family. Dennis and Sherryl are still working at the store part-time, showing Matt and Nichole Barrington the ropes. And their son Trevor Wilkinson has remained the shop manager. He’s been with the company for 10 years.

“They really want us to succeed,” says Nichole, who is currently learning how to put wording on plaques from Sherryl. They’re covering everything from best wording practices to the layout and types of fonts to use. Matt and Nichole both appreciate the collaboration they have with the Wilkinson family as it’s helped make the transition to being owners more seamless.

“They’ve all really taken care of customers over the years with the personalization and their hand touch. Everyone was concerned about losing that,” Matt says. “We can appreciate that we weren’t going to come in and be where they were for a long time.”

The five of them, plus one other part-time employee, make up the crew at D&S Awards.

“It’s a potent little place,” Matt says. “That was attractive.”

Dennis says he’s always kept the shop lean when it comes to staff.

“People in our industry are baffled by the amount of work we produce with this many people,” he says. “We all know our jobs, and we’re pretty darn efficient at them. We just work and get the job done.”

A Full Wineglass

 

D&S Awards was coined as an awards-and-recognition shop, but they do a little bit of everything when it comes to personalizing products.

“You wouldn’t believe some of the stuff we’ve mounted on plaques,” Dennis says. He recalls years ago having to literally mount a cow pie onto a piece of plywood. The smell was so bad he left it outside when he wasn’t working on it. He’s taken scores of airline liquor bottles and placed them on plaques to commemorate a customer’s friend who got a little too drunk at a party. There’s even a group of men with a perpetual golf trophy where the winner of their tournament must add a new item to it. They’ve also worked with some celebrity clientele over the years, like restaurateur, author, and television presenter Guy Fieri and musician Jonathan Cain, best known as a member of the band Journey.

The one-off unique assignments are usually the most entertaining, but the larger orders are where the money is made, says Dennis. One of D&S Awards’ specialties, being in the heart of wine country, is wine-bottle and glass etching, which Dennis learned to do on the fly when he was setting up his storefront in 1993. A woman came to the door before they were even open with a wine bottle and asked if they did glass etching.

“I told her yes, took the order, and figured it out later,” he says. “I never turn down a job unless I’ve already tried to do it and know I can’t.”

After taking the order, Dennis learned all he could about glass etching with sand-carving equipment. He went down to the liquor store, bought a cheap case of wine, and spent around 10 days putting his education to the test until he had a sufficient bottle. That wine company is still a customer today, and they are one of many. Glass etching accounts for nearly a half of the shop’s business, and they also do a lot of work with crystal awards, name/ID badges, and holiday gifts.

For Nichole, wine-bottle etching is one of her favorite parts of the business. “I’m so proud of the bottles when they’re done. They’re so beautiful,” she says.

  

Community Satisfaction

One of the aspects Matt likes best about his latest career is getting to deliver a high-quality product to a customer and see their reaction in real time. He worked for several years early on in his career in IT support, so he often had to deal with clients who were upset or frustrated, but that’s not the case at D&S Awards.

“The people that come in for awards and trophies are happy. They’re excited because they’re coming in for an event or to celebrate someone,” he says. “That’s not something I planned on, and it’s pretty cool.”

Matt and Nichole are aiming to continue business as usual at D&S Awards, and they’d also like to scale the business down the line with some marketing. They’re planning to revamp the website and do some online marketing via social media.

“All of [Dennis and Sherryl’s] customers come through their involvement in the community. They do almost no advertising. But there are so many more businesses that would use our services if they knew about us,” Matt says.

  

As for Dennis and Sherryl, they plan to stay on until the end of the year and maybe beyond. Dennis jokes that they need to, as the couple has developed a bit of an expensive car-collecting habit.

“As long as we can physically stay on and do it,” Dennis says. “That way we can keep having fun with cars.”

And, perhaps, a part of it is that it’s never all that easy to fully say goodbye to your baby.

Barbara Platts is the managing editor of Insights Magazine. She has worked in journalism and marketing fields for the last 14 years and is excited to be learning all about the awards and personalization industry.