It’s thought that by age 20, the average English speaker recognizes 42,000 words.
In the case of my 23-years-old daughter Buck Wheat, it’s 41,999.
Last night during the first hour of a marathon Facetime session, Buck was sharing the details of her New Year’s Eve. At least the details she is willing to share. Joining her crew of five for the night was a co-worker who up until that night, Buck had not gotten to know well.
“Did you get to know her at all?” I asked.
“Yeah!” She responded.
“Her father is a pasture!”
For a moment, I contemplated a joke. Maybe, “How many acres IS Jennifer’s father?” But it occurred to me that that might only add to the confusion. I moved on, hoping at least that the girl’s father was a pastor.
But with Buck, you’re never really sure.
Later in our marathon, the loquacious Buck shared that she’s going on an eight-day cleanse. She wants to “rid her body of unwanted toxins,” which is a sentence I knew she read, rather than created. When she told me what she was preparing to eat that night, as a side dish for her ribeye, it left me wondering if Buck knows what the word cleanse means?
Maybe it’s 41,998?
A significant department in many independent paint stores are decorative finishes. And why not? Decorative finishes are “high-touch” making them a nice fit for dealers, who prefer to offer consumers a higher-end shopping experience.
Specialty finishes, niche products were also a great place to raise my margins. Products which by their nature sell fewer gallons than broad-wall finishes are shopped for less frequently, making their prices less known.
Over the course of my time behind the counter, I rarely resisted a paint product that helped me raise my gross profit margins. Consumers for these types of products are generally not as price conscience or easy to “sticker shock.”
So, when I came across Jim Rogers, creator of the Modern Masters line of metallics, textures, glazes and more, and current director of brands for Golden Paint Works I was excited to get him on a podcast.
Jim’s tenure in the paint business goes back to 1977 when he and his father were paint manufactures in Los Angeles, primarily manufacturing artist paints. Those products became Modern Masters (now owned by Rustoleum) and Jim began to offer them to independent paint dealers.
At that time, Modern Masters was unusual product offering. Products now familiar to all dealers: glazes, specialty plasters, metallics and more, were not part of an independent dealer’s offering in late 70’s New York. As Jim was pioneering these finishes, dealers like my father Billy, were just learning to accept water-based paint as a reasonable alternative to “oils.”
Finding a home with New York dealers such as Janovic and Epstein’s Paint on 10th Avenue, who did business with New York’s theaters and decorative painters, Modern Masters got a foothold. Jim’s continued efforts in this space paid off and Modern Masters was embraced by the channel. Which may explain the sale to Rustoleum, and the space products like these get in your stores today.
I’ll leave for Jim to tell you the rest of his story. Including the story of his current iteration at Golden Paint Works. When a central New York family-owned manufacturer of artists paints, Golden Paint Works, wanted to expand beyond the art store and into the paint store, Jim was the guy to call.
You can listen here on my own site, on the Apple Podcast site as well as on Soundcloud and Stitcher.
I hope you enjoy the listen. I’ll be back on Monday with more stories from the paint wars.
