A customer emailed me the other day with a question.
“A customer owns an all wood siding 2story house in key west he rents. I’m schedule to go and paint it. He said the paint store over there says the Regal Ext is a better paint for that area. I’m leaning on Moore Glo. In your opinion which would be better for that all salt water environment?”
I emailed back “short answer is Regal Select”. This tweetish answer implies that there is a longer explanation but fitting something like what follows on his blackberry screen wouldn’t do, so it is posted here.
Benjamin Moore has announced to us dealers that they intend a thorough rationalizing of their entire product lines as well as within their subsidiary companies. This whole process started with the introduction of Aura, “the Finest Paint they Ever Made”. The idea at the time was to be able to produce products with the least amount of regulated solvents, known as VOC’s, which could be sold in every area of the country. For this to happen the colorants had to change and with the colorants the paints themselves had to be made differently.
Soon after the launch of their proprietary waterborne tinting system known as Gennex, Ben Moore’s line nearly doubled as an array of new Gennex lines were added next to the existing. Some stores signed agreements with BM and were incentivized (read coerced) to carry all the new lines; those who didn’t become aligned with that business model acquired new products anyways as consumers asked for them. Now, with a new BM CEO, it is time to pare back to a comprehensive organized system of paints and coatings.
Benjamin Moore has announced plans to reformulate all their water based products to be tinted on the Gennex tinting machines. With products that currently have twins, the products formulated for universal tints will be eliminated. For example we have Super Spec and Ultra Spec, the former uses the universal tints and the latter Gennex. Both are available and marketed to the professional / commercial market at this time. Super Spec is to be phased out this year and Ultra Spec will remain. For my man above, he wants information to make a choice between MoorGlo and Regal Select. Although the MoorGlo brand will persist it will be under the Regal Select moniker and it will be optimized for Gennex. Regal Select will become a high-build coating. So even if the MoorGlo now is a better product we have to look to the future and move toward what will be available later when it is time to touch up or do some maintenance.
This is the plan for the future and it makes sense. Benjamin Moore and its under companies, Coronado, Corotech, Insl-x, and Lenmar will all be separate companies linked together. Each company has a specialty core that will complement the others: Benjamin Moore has premium house paints, Coronado offers additional alternatives to BM’s premium paints, CoroTech is the industrial coatings division, Lenmar will specialize in wood coatings, and Insl-x will provide specialty architectural coatings. The break up allows the different divisions to concentrate on what they do best, making paints to meet a particular set of market demands and government regulations. Together they provide a well rounded selection of products to meet nearly every market.
