Don't Listen, He's Telling the Truth!

I’ll be recording a podcast live today, May 21^st, at 3:00 PM Eastern summarizing the results of Big Paint’s most recent quarter, including updates on Sherwin-Williams, PPG, Behr, RPM, Pittsburgh Paints, Benjamin Moore, Home Depot and Lowe’s.  And from Graco, the makers of professional paint sprayers which are an indispensable component of most larger paint jobs.  Making Graco’s results perhaps the best data available, when forecasting demand for architectural coatings.

And sales at Graco’s Contractor Equipment Division declined 4% net of inflation.

Portending what’s to come for architectural coatings, the softer for longer which Sherwin-Williams CEO Heidi Petz has been warning us about.  Manifested present-day in shrinking sales and forecasts of economic uncertainty and inflation.  A malaise most manufacturers I speak with expect to last the remainder of this year, though I’m not sure what could be improved by then and am expecting a longer drought.  A protracted period of low or even negative growth in gallons sold, as tens of millions of Americans deal with larger issues such as the price of food, housing and healthcare. 

Paint will wait.

Subsumed in that downward trend is another one equally as obvious, that DIY paint consumers are losing love for big-box stores.  Confirmed by the data for too long not to notice.  What RPM CEO Frank Sullivan called, “more than two years of punky behavior” on the part of DIY consumers.   

Some of that traffic is lost to the economy, but the rest is going to Benjamin Moore, as consumer preferences continue to shift in this crucial market segment.  Some to the independent retailers of Moore’s Paint and Decorating segment with the rest going to Ace Hardware, which reported that sales were up 11% in the first quarter.  The only one in paint whose growth outpaced inflation, though most paint and decorating retailers tell me they’re keeping it close. 

In the effort to force Sherwin-Williams to make their plant in Rochester, Pennsylvania legal and safe, I’ve added significantly to my regular content channels.  Some of which I’ve mentioned here, such as my podcast series Boycott Sherwin-Williams, which I’m using to update the news of that effort. 

To light another fuse on this story’s bursting, I created a TikTok profile dedicated to telling the truth about what Heidi Petz is ordering done to Rochester.  Operating illegally, each day venting more poisons into the atmosphere and people there at her insistence.  The waste of her process force-fed on the innocent, turning today’s particulate into tomorrow’s cancer in the blood and bones of Rochester’s youth.  So that those who survive can pass Heidi’s mutations onto another generation, while she protects her generational wealth from the consequences of her actions.

Which she will face soon. 

Until she does, I’ve taken to TikTok with an idea my fiancéeic gave me, so if Heidi doesn’t like it she’ll have to sue her too.  She advised a new backdrop for my upcoming content, one to help connect the dots for people just hearing about the story for the first time.  As will be the case for most outside of Rochester and this following, as the shadow of Heidi’s crimes meets the sunlight of my truths.      

THE series will answer questions from Rochester, as forcing that plant to operate legally remains my only goal.  Despite that intention, there are stray questions in the mix including several about wage theft, because it’s the same ethics which engenders all of Sherwin’s crimes.  And reflects an indifference Sherwin perfects not just towards the people of Rochester, but also towards their own employees.

And consumers.    

When the lawsuits begin—and that time is fast approaching—this story will break our bounds here and accountability will commence for Sherwin, triggering what’s likely to be the most difficult era in the paint maker’s 160-year history, which I need you to help precipitate.  By tricking TikTok’s algorithm into thinking these videos are going viral, which greatly increases the odds that they will.  Which I’m hopeful will bring economic pressure to Sherwin as their legal problems mount, so that making that plant legal becomes their best path forward.  Forcing ethics on Cleveland, since they refuse to adopt them on their own.

The videos are located here, here and here and if you’re on TikTok, I need five minutes of your time to help me slay this dragon.  And to get these videos going by liking and commenting on each one, before forwarding them to ten people and asking that they do the same.  Just that effort significantly raises the prospects of virality, which if achieved becomes a weapon in my hands in this fight against injustice.    

Then I can take it from there.