Today I got to meet one of our homeowner customers at his home. This fella, a white collar worker in an apparently successful business gauging by the Cadillac he drives, was having some trouble. He picked a color from a little paper color chip and “fell in love” with it. In fact he had seen it on a neighbor’s house and thought it was terrific! It should look great on his house too, right?
He bought the paint, instructed his handyman to paint his house and left for work. Upon returning home he discovered that what he thought was the perfect color (the perfect color for his neighbor’s house) was too yellow. Immediately he called our store and insisted that there was some problem with the paint, that color was made wrong. There was much consternation and upsetting behavior but when the actual paint was compared to the little chip the color was spot on. It was mixed right and the handyman did a decent job of applying the paint but painting is more than just putting paint on the wall.
So, here’s an intelligent man who thinks he knows something about paint and painting but wouldn’t verify his pick of a color. He didn’t sample it on the wall to see what it looked like before he bought the paint or had the entire front of his house painted. His handyman didn’t sample it, he just went and did what he was told. His impulsiveness created a situation that caused a lot of stress for himself and my employees because he skipped a few basic protocols that a pro would have walked him through. Fortunately we think we can adjust the remaining paint to a better color but it is still going to cost him in having to pay to repaint over the unwanted color.
It is hard to be a painter - it definitely is a skilled trade and the people who decide to make a career of it deserve respect. There is a lot to know and products are being introduced / discontinued / modified constantly. The paint we will be using in a couple of years will be technologically very different from what was industry standard 5 or 10 years ago. There are specialties within the universe of coatings such as wood staining, faux finishing, driveways and garage floors that require years of experience to do properly.
There are lots of costs that painters must contend with that a handyman doesn’t. Insurance, licensing, signage, advertising, uniforms and lord knows what else that must be paid in order to do business. Miami-Dade county mandates that contractors recieve 8 hours of instruction per year but doesn’t provide classes on painting. So painters go to class to waste a day in a room while someone drones on about air conditioning or some-such.
Throughout 2008 we offered evening events to help interested customers to see new products that could help elevate them over their competition.The attendence was astoundingly poor. Even our day events such as painter breakfasts and equipment demonstrations did not attact much attention, a fact which I find distressing. These events have our factory people on hand to talk directly to the consumer, the end user. And if the painters refuse to learn new things or find ways of increasing their value to potential clients then there is no help at all for them and they will continue to lose ground.
Not to get all maudlin but the industry has been shifting around for quite a while now and as a store we are increasingly selling paint to homeowners; not so they can do their own painting but so they can pay a handyman to Do-It-For-Them. This is not a good trend by my book and we at O-Gee want to help encourage homeowners to use career professionals. Give us some comments on ways painters can raise their value. Is it helping with color decisions, warrantees, product knowledge, clean appearance, or something else that would make a potential client willing to pay the higher dollar? What do you think?
