But even though the life plan has unfolded much as the founder of E Complete, LLC envisioned it when he was a teen, he hadn’t made allowances for a fast-growing company that would grow from a dinnertime conversation. Prep and Save was planned as an online business. But sales from an obscure retail location on Linda Way in a Sparks industrial neighborhood have kept the little company so busy that its management just recently flipped the switch on a Web site. The retailer’s niche: Supplies that folks need to prepare for survival in case of natural disaster, terror attacks, or severe financial crisis. The business grew from conversation around a table at a holiday party, he says. An employee’s spouse had recently read “One Second After”, a novel by William Forstchen that deals with the effects of electromagnetic pulse attack on the United States. As the staffer recounted tales from the novel to a transfixed group of employees, Hillen began contemplating the business angles.
“Most people haven’t sat down and thought about this,” he says. Today, after sitting down and thinking about it, Hillen is a strong believer in the need for Americans to prepare. For him, Prep and Save is part business, part missionary endeavor to spread the word.
