Above: Jodie Bailey of Xtreme Paint & Graphics custom paints a motorhome.

Photo: Stephanie Banks.

This story first appeared in the Nacogdoches Daily Sentinel's "Chamber" page on Monday, January 18, 2010.

No plain paint allowed

By Stephanie Banks

Contributing writer

Xtreme Paint & Graphics, a company built on experience and limited only by the customer’s imagination, has been in business for 10 years. Founded by James Stallings and his wife Jennifer, the company paints, customizes and performs collision repairs on motorhomes, RVs, trucks and trailers in Nacogdoches. “We take an older coach, make it look like new and personalize it,” James said.

The firm performs step conversions, headlight and taillight conversions, back door and fuel door conversions.  Xtreme creates custom awnings for trailers and motorhomes and  - using hand brush or air brush - gives a factory-finish look to motorhomes and other vehicles.

They can even take a photo and put it on the motorhome or trailer. “We can pretty much do anything we need to do as far as graphics,” James said.

The business employs 12 people, advertises mainly by word of mouth, and is growing. “In the future we would like to expand,” James said, “and possibly even purchase land to put in overflow parking."

James said Xtreme Paint & Graphics is “very customer oriented.” Most paint jobs on motorhomes take about a month. The company offers customers a fully-furnished apartment if they are displaced while their motorhome is being painted. James claims this as unique to his company.

Xtreme Paint & Graphics also paints boats, airplanes, trailers and professional drag racing cars. “A guy wanted us to paint his plane, so he flew from Nevada, picked us up and we painted it there,” James said. “Then he flew us back to Texas.”

In fact, most of their business is from out of state. Some jobs are even from out of the hemisphere. “We’ve done two trailers that have gone to Qatar,” James said. He has also painted motorhomes from Maine to California, and even Canada. “Customers drive their motorhomes to Nacogdoches, rent a car to drive to Houston and fly home, then fly back when their motorhome is finished,” James said.

Taking a shop class at a Denton high school in 1976, James fell in love with painting. After graduating he took over a local paint shop and began to fulfill his dream. He painted motorhomes and professional race trailers in the Denton area in the early 1990s, working mainly with another motor coach manufacturer and NHRA drag racing teams.

James met with Ray Fore of Foretravel in 1997.   

Seeing their own name on a Nacogdoches street sign caught the attention of the Stallings family.

“When we saw ‘Stallings Drive’ we figured this was where we belonged,” Jennifer said.

James and Jennifer moved to Nacogdoches in January 2000 and opened a paint shop for Foretravel.  

James also operated Xtreme Paint & Graphics as a separate business in Henderson, painting motorhomes and trailers. Jennifer was staying at home with three kids and volunteering at the high school for band boosters and Project Graduation. “With three kids in high school I was pretty busy,” Jennifer said. “I had to come back to work to get some rest,” she laughed. “After the last one graduated it helped to keep too busy to have empty nest syndrome, or worrying about our two boys in the Army.”

In 2004 the pair moved the company to its current location, the old Lowell’s Paint & Body shop at 7515 North St.  Jennifer is now the chief financial officer, doing most of the accounting. Her favorite part of the job, however, is working with the customers.

The firm has won nine awards from the Specialty Equipment Marketing Association – SEMA -  the world’s premier automotive specialty products trade event.  James said that their biggest challenge now is “just having a steady flow of business.”

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For more information about Xtreme Paint & Graphics, click here.