ALLPRO Independent Vol. 1, Issue 1 Jan/Feb 2018

ALLPRO

INDEPENDENT J a n u a r y / F E B RUARY 2 0 18

Family Ties

Running a business with Dad means more than a paycheck

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FA L L SHOW REDUX

NEW AT T I T U D E S

HOW TO BE A LEADER

Famed adventurer gives powerful talk

Do young people hire pro painters?

Experts reveal tips and tricks

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• FROM US TO YOU • C O M PA N Y PROFILES • ALLPRO CORNER

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Turning the Page

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ver the past couple of years, ALLPRO has been undergoing a renaissance of sorts. No, we didn’t enroll in a group art class or add a banding wheel for molding pottery in the break room.

Rather, ours has been a renaissance of function and purpose from an organizational standpoint. ALLPRO was founded with the vision that it would be an engine that enabled its members to achieve greater profitability through its buying

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we’ve challenged ourselves to scrutinize our operations, processes and methodologies with an eye toward finding ways to add greater value.

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programs. That vision was, and still is, the primary driver for ALLPRO, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t room for becoming something more… something that offers its stakeholders even greater utility.

With that in mind, we’ve challenged ourselves to scrutinize our operations, processes and methodologies with an eye toward finding ways to add greater value.

We’ve added a health-care program, expanded distribution operations, reformatted the spring and fall events, and added a 401(k) benefits program, among other things. As

part of this effort we also looked at our newsletter, The Scouting Report, and felt it could add greater value to its audience. To that end, we restructured and modernized the newsletter to better fit the needs of the organization as it is today. The end result is what you are currently reading: the ALLPRO Independent.

Why the name change? Going forward, we felt it wasn’t enough to add new features, restructure the advertising section, and upgrade the content, design and overall layout of the publication. We felt it needed a name that would better resonate with those we serve. We also felt changing the name would be emblematic of the fact that we’ve turned the page, so to speak, to an organization with a broader scope.

Inside the ALLPRO Independent you’ll find that some elements have been carried over. We’ll still feature articles that profile member companies, introduce new members and supplier partners, and offer industry-relevant news items. In addition, we’ll feature stories on our supplier partners that offer insights into their history, company culture, initiatives that give back to the local community and so on. Much like the member profiles, these articles are intended to give the reader a better understanding of the company apart from specific products or services. We’ll also accept sponsored content from our supplier partners that gives them an opportunity to contribute articles that will benefit the retailer. Again, the purpose is not to promote a product or service.

Rather, it is to provide value to the retailer by imparting knowledge or a better understanding of best practices as they apply to business

from us to you

By Scott Morath

in general or a specific category. It’s an opportunity for any of our supplier partners to showcase their expertise and contribute to the success of the independent retailer.

The ALLPRO Independent will be available in both print and digital formats for your convenience. We hope you’ll enjoy the improvements we’ve made with the ALLPRO Independent as much as its predecessor and even more so. If you’d like us to feature specific stories or topics, let us know and we’ll do our best to develop the appropriate content. We certainly look forward to continuing the legacy of The Scouting Report in this new publication, as well as continuing our efforts to find innovative ways to add value to your relationship with ALLPRO.

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January/February 2018 ALLPRO Independent

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Fall

Meeting Roundup

Everest. He has reached the summit of Everest five times. he most recent ALLPRO fall stockholders meeting Beaudoin said the talk was better and more relevant than was a revamped affair that impressed attendees. anyone expected. “He gave us really candid insight into how “We accomplished what we were looking to do,” said he prepares to climb a mountain, how he structures teams and Mike Beaudoin, executive vice president of ALLPRO how he tries to find out how they can work together. A lot of Corporation. “What we were looking to do was reinvent the show that did translate to business, although that wasn’t really the by putting more energy into it. It opened with a dueling-piano motive when we hired him.” show to generate excitement.

Rodger Storteboom, of Douglas “Secondly, we had professional & Son in Kalamazoo, Michigan, said trainers, so there was meaningful he was a little confused at first as to content for our members,” why Breashears was chosen as the he said. “We wanted to give keynote speaker. “But it was awethem content they could take inspiring,” he said. “The importance back to their businesses, and of teamwork. Everyone has to be on that overwhelmingly was well the same page. I believe that, too. If received.” Beaudoin said the you have somebody going off on their trainers were experts in fields such own, it doesn’t work out very well.” as e-commerce, sales, human Breashears also impressed upon resources and social media. “One Mountaineer and filmmaker David Breashears talks with attendees the importance of timing, of the speakers was a dealer from ALLPRO’s Mike Beaudoin.

Storteboom said: “Sometimes you Canada,” said show attendee Paul have to hold back. You have to choose when to move forward Berres, of Born Paint Company in Peoria, Illinois. “She had a on implementing things.” Berres added that Breashears’s talk pretty interesting program. She talked about Facebook and social captivated the audience. “He was really, really interesting. media and electronically promoting your business.”

Hardly anybody moved, budged.”

Thirdly, Beaudoin said, they wanted to do something Storteboom said he enjoyed the show’s revamped format. that took people out of their businesses and moved them “We all get caught up in our businesses, and a lot of us don’t as individuals. “And that’s what a talk by David Breashears have a lot of spare employees,” he said. “But I have always provided,” he said. Breashears is an American mountaineer tried to attend those things because I have always come back and filmmaker who has completed more than 40 film projects richer for it.” related to climbing, including an IMAX film shot on Mount

ALLPRO Independent

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• Volume 1 • Issue 1

ALLPRO Leadership

About ALLPRO Independent

How to Reach Us

President Glen Morosohk

We are a bimonthly publication dedicated to

Write us at ALLPRO Corporation

Executive Vice President Mike Beaudoin

strengthening the ALLPRO community with

4946 Joanne Kearney Blvd., Tampa, FL 33619

Director of Marketing Scott Morath

relevant stories and news. Your suggestions,

Or contact us at 813-628-4800 or by email at allpro@allprocorp.com.

Marketing Coordinator Susie Fontana

opinions and feedback are encouraged.

All publishing services provided by Stevens Editorial.

January/February 2018 ALLPRO Independent

Tanner Turns 85

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anner Paint Company of Tampa, Florida, celebrates its 85th birthday in 2018, and its owners plan to commemorate the occasion by doing 85 special things for customers throughout the year. They’re just not sure yet what all 85 special things will be. “It will be 85 somethings,” co-owner Jett Tanner said. “It could be as simple as ‘hat day’ or some special sale.” She knows that two days will be set aside to honor employee Rashad Hooper’s 20 years on

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Tanner Paint is no stranger to customer appreciation events. It is known for its vendor-sponsored hog roasts, breakfasts, dessert bars and holiday parties.

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the job and employee Bobby Floyd’s 30 years on the job. “It’s ambitious,” Tanner said, “but we can do it.”

Tanner Paint is no stranger to customer appreciation events. It is known (and undoubtedly loved) for its vendor-sponsored hog roasts, breakfasts, dessert bars and holiday parties. It is also known for its commitment to community causes. Over the years, Tanner Paint Company has found various ways to raise money for a nonprofit organization called End 68 Hours of Hunger. The goal of End 68 Hours of Hunger, Tanner explained, is to make certain that underprivileged children are well fed from the time they leave school on Friday until they return on Monday.

West Coast Update ALLPRO’s new West Coast warehouse became operational in August, so we asked new distribution center manager Harold Beigle about his new job, the new digs and himself.

Independent: Tell us about your background.

Beigle: I was in the Army for four years. My last duty station was in Kansas. My wife is from Oregon, so we moved there when I got out in 2013. Since I came out of the military, I have done everything you can imagine in a warehouse.

Independent: Who benefits from the new ALLPRO warehouse?

Beigle: More than 80 ALLPRO members located in the western half of the U.S. and Canada. It gives them the opportunity to order products in smaller quantities to fill in between their larger direct orders.

Independent: What is a containment room and why do we need one?

Beigle: That is a special solvent room in the warehouse that was built to code specifically to house all of our solvents and chemicals. We made a big investment in that so members can have access to those types of products.

In Memoriam

Richard Guiry

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ichard “Dick” Guiry passed away peacefully on Nov. 15, 2017, at the age of 80. He had battled Lou Gehrig’s disease and Lyme disease during the past year. Dick was born in Denver on Oct. 11, 1937, and developed a love for the community there and a passion for business

while working in his dad’s paint and wallpaper stores. Guiry was the third generation to run his family’s paint and decorating business, Guiry’s Inc. Guiry was a well-respected friend and colleague who will be sincerely missed by all who knew and worked with him.

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January/February 2018 ALLPRO Independent

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Professional Influence Some ALLPRO members say pro painters are claiming an increasing share of the independent retail sales mix and it’s transforming the way their stores work.

By Steve Penhollow

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boff’s Paint was founded in 1929 and has 33 stores in New York’s Nassau and Suffolk counties.

General manager Kevin Koster said it wasn’t at all unusual 20 or 30 years ago to see retail customer tallies at one of the stores between 200 and 300 on a Saturday. But it’s different now. “At the time, we had DIYers—middle class and upper middle class—who liked to do their own painting,” Koster said.

“Homeowners would tend to call in electricians, carpenters and plumbers, but when it came to painting, they did their own work.” That trend has ended, he said.

Not Your Father’s Business Model The focus for some ALLPRO members has shifted to the professional painter, who has needs and purchasing habits that are distinct from the DIYer’s. This has compelled those retailers to revamp and rethink everything from sales strategy and inventory to the size and makeup of their workforce.

Part of the reason for that has to do with the rising influence of a new generation of consumers.

Today, young married couples with families have a very different mindset about painting than their parents and grandparents did, Koster said. “What we find now is that the classic American family, young people in particular, they both work and their free time is at a premium,” he said. “So painting is now in the same league as electrical work and plumbing. When they need painting done, homeowners are not doing it themselves. They’re calling in a painter.”

“The younger generation does not do as many do-ityourself projects,” said Elliot Greenberg, president and CEO of Chicago’s JC Licht company. “They just want to get it done. Painting contractors have become such a bigger part of our landscape than I remember 10, 15 and 20 years ago.”

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This development has required a business model shift, Koster said. “The customer who is making the decision as to what brand of paint to buy and where to buy it is no longer the homeowner,” he said. “It’s the painter.” Aboff’s business went “from 75 percent retail a generation ago to 75 percent contractor today,” Koster said.

The professional customer forces the retailer to be more “price aware” than he would be if he were servicing the DIYer, he said. “Contractors who buy large volumes are much more price aware than a retail customer who is not

going to drive one town or two towns over to save a dollar or two on a gallon of paint,” he said.

Rob Sheehan, vice president of professional segment engagement for Benjamin Moore, said the shift from DIYers to professionals was a natural one. Independent paint stores were affected by the rise of the big boxes and lost some of their DIYers to the chains. Then some competitors started adding outside reps and offering different contractor services.

“Painters are really in the wheelhouse of most paint stores,” Sheehan said. “So it was sort of a natural shift. I’m not sure

anyone really did it on purpose. Their business just naturally started gravitating more toward the professional segment.”

Many of the paint stores responded by adding delivery services and more outside reps. “They just started gearing more toward the segment that they could impact,” Sheehan said.

One of the ways Greenberg has gone about trying to attract professional customers is by sponsoring special events both in and out of his stores. “In the past couple of years, we’ve spent a significant amount of dollars on at least 25 events a year for our contractor customers,” he said. “Some of them

January/February 2018 ALLPRO Independent

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are nighttime events for families, some are daytime events, but they’re all pretty significant. We get great turnout. It’s a way to showcase what we do and how we do it, but mostly it’s to build deep relationships with our contractor customer base.”

JC Licht promotions run the gamut from Taco Tuesdays to free soccer and baseball tickets. “We’re just letting them know that we’re there for them and that they are first on our mind,” Greenberg said. In all parts of our economy, Koster added, “you need to be better than you used to be” to get the same market share. “You have to be more aware, more market savvy and have a better price model.”

An Inventory and Pricing Problem In terms of how customer service is defined, there is a big difference between servicing the retail customer and servicing the professional, Koster said. “A retail customer will come in and ask you what they need,” he said. “A contractor will come in and tell you what they want.” This has meant big changes for inventory, Koster said. “In order to service that contractor, we need more depth and breadth of inventory. We have to have what they’re looking for.”

From the perspective of the front office of Benjamin Moore, inventory and pricing discrepancies from one Benjamin Moore– affiliated store to another can make competing with companies that own their own retail stores a challenge, Sheehan said.

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“Painters don’t always work where their neighborhood store is,” he said. “When they are traveling, they go to different dealers. So there is lack of consistency in pricing. There is a lack of consistency in product offering. Dealer A carries products A, B and C. Dealer B carries products D, E and F.” Our competitors do not have that challenge, Sheehan said.

“They own their channel, so they can have the same products and the same accounts and the same pricing across the marketplace.”

Another challenge for the independent channel and for Benjamin Moore is being able to service national accounts.

“They want to be billed from one place,” Sheehan said. He added that Benjamin Moore is working on solutions to address this area of the business.

Greenberg said JC Licht has helped fulfill the specific needs of Windy City professionals by opening three commercial paint centers. “They open up anywhere from 4 to 5 in the morning to get delivery people going early,” he said. Equipment that can knock out big commercial jobs quickly and the manpower to run that equipment doesn’t come cheap. Neither does having employees show up at 4 a.m. every day. “You can’t open up at 4 and not add to your payroll,” he said.

But when Greenberg purchased the chain in 2015, he knew he had to invest in the growth and evolution of the business.

The JC Licht chain currently has 36 stores in Illinois, and

Greenberg said he intends to expand that to 50 stores. The company had 30 locations when he first took over. “One of the things I did when I first came here was talk to customers, and they wanted us to open a lot of locations,” he said.

For their part, Aboff’s added an equipment program to provide contractors with the technology to help them become more efficient and profitable. “That was something we weren’t very good at,” Koster said. “Now we’re very good at it. The challenge with an equipment program is that the margins are very skinny compared with the margins you like to make on other products. You have to adopt the philosophy that the profit you’re going to get from an equipment sale is not going to be measured in dollars. It’s going to be measured in the loyalty of your customer.”

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Moore Help

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enjamin Moore has implemented more than one program over the past couple of years designed to help retailers pursue the professional segment. In late 2016, it introduced Contractor Rewards, a free program that allows contractors to accrue redeemable points they can use for the company’s merchandise and to access exclusive offers and product promotions. Another program allows retailers to offset some of the costs for outside sales. When a dealer first hires a sales rep, for instance, that rep usually doesn’t come in with any accounts. Rob Sheehan, vice president of professional segment engagement for Benjamin Moore, said the rep has to be given time to develop business.

“There’s obviously a cost,” Sheehan said. “There’s a cost to the dealer. We have a program that we put in place to offset that cost for the first two years.” It’s a significant investment on the part of Benjamin Moore and on the part of the dealer. “At the end of the day,” Sheehan said, “we know that when you have those people out there, they’re going to generate sales.””

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M E M B E R P RO F I L E

Hessler Paint & Decorating Center The owner of this Delray Beach, Florida store has two daughters who are more than capable of following in his footsteps. If he ever quits working, that is.

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an Hessler may never willingly retire, but if and when he does, he will pass his paint business along to his two daughters, Jaime and Laura. This is not the typical line of succession in paint retailing, even today. Usually one or more sons are involved. However, Dan’s son is happily employed in California as a video-game animator. “He’s a traitor,” Hessler joked.

Dan said his wife, Nancy, has always impressed upon him the importance of letting their children follow their own paths, and he agreed. And it was the daughters’ paths that led them back to Hessler Paint & Decorating Center, with four locations in southeastern Florida.

Jaime said she didn’t even start working in the store until after college, when she came back home looking to salt away some money.

“That’s when I was introduced to the paint business, which I had zero knowledge about,” she said.

After two years, she moved away to try her hand at other things, but homesickness eventually brought her

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back. She returned with a whole new perspective on the paint business.

“I saw what a great opportunity this was for me to take,” she said. “It kept growing on me, and I decided it was something I wanted to hold on to.”

Jaime says she and her sister have opposite personalities, which may have created some sibling rivalries when they were kids but works out well in a business setting. “I’m more of an operations person,” she said. “I’m all about the numbers and doing things the right way, and my sister is more of an outgoing salesperson. People gravitate toward her and love her, and she is great at selling.”

Laura is mainly in charge of the decorating side, called Hessler Interiors. Hessler Interiors diversified the business’s product mix, bringing in more high-end items. This, in turn, brought in a greater variety of customers, which helped Hessler Paint & Decorating Center weather the recession.

They spruced up the facade of the main store in Delray Beach, and that attracted new customers. A nice balance of commercial, contractor and retail clientele helped the

business get through the recession relatively unscathed, Laura said. “When one thing is down, the other thing picks up,” she added.

The world of paint retailing and paint contracting is still very much a male-dominated one, so customers and sales reps aren’t always thrilled to deal directly with Jaime or Laura. “I’ve had people walk right past me and then they have to come back to me because I’m the only one who has the right answer,” Jaime said. “I had an elderly

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Jaime says she and her sister have opposite personalities. “I’m more of an operations person,” SHE said. “I’m all about the numbers, and LAURA (ABOVE) is more of an outgoing salesperson.

People gravitate toward her and love her, and she is great at selling.”

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Kids typically come into a family business and JUST collect a paycheck. Jaime and Laura are completely the opposite of that. I am so proud of them.

Assistant manager Matt Edgar and Jaime Hessler help a customer.

woman outright say, ‘Can I speak with a man?’”

“You should have said to her, ‘You mean one of the men who works for me and knows less than I know?’” Dan told Jaime. Once people get to know Jaime, they usually come straight to her with questions, she said. But the older sales reps definitely treat Laura differently than the younger reps do. “Some of them have been very condescending to me,” she said, “but when they talk to my father, they’re sweet as butter.”

For the most part, however, the sisters are respected.

“Jaime is the one who deals with the contractors,” Dan said, “and all the contractors who have gotten to know her over the years respect her. She has the respect of all the contractors and all the employees. They hardly bother me for anything anymore.”

Dan knows his daughters are extremely hard workers.

“Kids typically come into a family business and sit there acting like a bump,” he said. “They collect a paycheck.

Jaime and Laura are completely the opposite of that. I am so proud of them.” Jaime and Laura are “a great yin and yang together,” he added. “I feel very lucky to sit there every day, look across the room and see my daughters.”

Dan thinks one of the biggest challenges his daughters will face going forward is e-commerce. “Obviously, e-commerce is a huge concern for all retailers. It’s hard to e-commerce paint. Benjamin Moore and Sherwin-Williams have tried it.” Color selection and other factors make e-commercing paint a challenge, but Dan is working on an online sales component that they hope to launch in the near

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Dan Hessler with wife Nancy Hessler.

future. “We’ve got to give it a good shot to get some of that business back,” he said.

Dan said they’ve lost a lot of walk-in pot-and-brush traffic over the years to the big boxes, so they recently added a second salesman to their outside sales force. “I think it’s critical that you have an outside sales force to compete in this market,” he said. “Home Depot has outside salespeople now. All the big boxes have people on the road selling paint.

You have to be right there with them step-by-step if you’re going to survive.”

Surely the biggest decision the Hesslers have made to ensure a prosperous future for the business was to turn the main Delray Beach store into an Ace Hardware store. The renovation, which is ongoing, will add 7,000 square feet to the space. The grand reopening should happen sometime in the summer of 2018. “That’s one of our game plans also,” Dan said. “We’ll grow our footprint at the main store and bring in hardware to offset some of the market pressures.” Dan, an avid surfer, said he thinks he’ll always be involved in the business in some capacity as long as he is physically capable.

“This business is in his blood,” Jaime said. What Dan dreams of instead of full retirement is taking more time off.

“I do want to work fewer hours,” Dan said. “I’m tired of working seven days a week. I want to travel more.” Dan hopes he and Nancy will eventually buy a new pickup truck and use it to go camping more. A trip to Australia and New Zealand for their 40th wedding anniversary is a strong possibility as well. “We want them to do that,” Jaime said. “We want them to travel because they’ve worked so hard for so long.”

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E D U C AT I ON

Leadership 101

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f you asked some of the most accomplished businesspeople to name one characteristic that all highfunctioning operations share, one of the most common answers you’d get is “strong leadership.”

Yet, while strong leadership is important to a business doing well, few managers and owners invest any time in developing their leadership skills.

We recently discussed this with Dan Tratensek, executive vice president of the North American Retail Hardware

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if you commit to working on your leadership skills, the payoff is considerable and your team will thank you for it.

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Association (NRHA), and Scott Wright, head of the NRHA’s Retail Leadership Institute, who will be leading a discussion about leadership at the ALLPRO University meeting in January. “So many people take over as a manager or owner because they have a strong knowledge of the business,” Tratensek said. “But understanding how to operate a paint or hardware store doesn’t mean you understand how to be a good leader.”

Tratensek said leadership, like any other skill, can be learned, but doing so requires a commitment to self-improvement and an

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ALLPRO quizzed two management strategy experts about what it takes to be a great leader.

understanding that becoming a better leader is a neverending process. “From personal experience I can tell you that leading any group is one of the most difficult challenges anyone can face. You can commit to becoming a better leader no matter what stage of your career you are in,” he said. “But if you commit to working on your leadership skills, the payoff is considerable and your team will thank you for it.”

During their discussion in January, Tratensek and Wright will focus on the specific challenges young leaders are presented with when they step into their first leadership role and share some insights they have gleaned from the NRHA’s Foundations of Leadership and Retail Management certification programs.

“Whether it is overcoming the stigma of being young and having to lead team members who might be twice your age, or simply getting comfortable with what kind of leader you want to be, we will share some suggestions on how to start down the path of moving from manager to leader,” added Wright, who has personally worked with hundreds of young leaders in his role with the NRHA. Understanding things like personal communication styles, different leadership characteristics and common traits shared by respected leaders can help anyone who is new to a leadership position establish greater credibility with their team, said Wright. “By having a better understanding of what type of leader you want to be and how to effectively communicate with your team, you will be more confident in your own abilities, and that confidence will reverberate with your team,” Wright said.

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Dan Tratensek

Scott Wright

Back to School

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right and Tratensek will talk more about leadership development during their session, “Leadership 101: A Basic Course in Becoming a Better Leader.” The talk will take place in early 2018 at ALLPRO University: Next Gen, an event that offers personalized training and networking opportunities designed for tomorrow’s industry leaders.

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M a r k e t pl a ce

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A

History of

Loyalty

For 166 years, The Wooster Brush Company has taken care of its employees, who in turn take care of Wooster Brush.

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he visitor had seen the inside of a factory many times before. He was a manager in a research laboratory for a large, well-known paint manufacturer, so plants like this one in Wooster, Ohio, where they make paintbrushes and other paint tools, were old hat to him. But something about the inside of this particular plant caught his eye.

Workers went about their business in a certain way. Their movements were purposeful but not mechanical. People were quick but not careless. They helped each other. The visitor told his host he could tell at least one thing about the men and women he observed that day: They knew what they were doing.

A Reason to Stay Wooster’s workers got that way, presumably, by spending a lot of time at their job. Indeed, the average employee tenure at Wooster is 15 years, but that includes workers on the second and third shifts who often have fewer years of service. Three recent retirees worked at the company for 38 years, 41 years and 44 years.

While these days a career of more than five years can pass for seniority at a lot of companies, that isn’t so at Wooster.

According to Mary Stark, a customer service manager there and a 27-year employee, people stick around so long because the company treats them well. “It’s like a big family here, you know? Everybody knows everybody. And our benefits are great. They really take care of you,” she said. Indeed, Wooster did profit sharing before profit sharing was a thing companies

did, starting their program in 1917. And employees there don’t pay for health insurance. Wooster also does an annual dinner, Stark said, where company awards are handed out.

During an annual summer outing, employees might go to a Cleveland Indians game or to Cedar Point, a nearby theme park. Wooster foots the bill for everything.

Baseball games and roller coasters aside, employees are more likely to be loyal to a company that is loyal to them. Despite the global economic crises of the past decade, Wooster hasn’t laid off a worker since the 1960s. “I don’t worry about anything happening to my job or to Wooster Brush,” Stark said. “You know what I’m saying? I feel very confident in the stability of the company.”

The company’s stability is partly a by-product of its long history. Founded in 1851, Wooster Brush started, in a way, by accident. Founder Adam Foss bought a crate without knowing what was in it. Once opened, the box revealed hogs bristle, the main component at the time in paintbrushes. “Did you

ever see the television show Storage Wars?” laughed Doug Crumling, Wooster’s manager of national accounts, referring to a show in which people buy storage units knowing almost nothing about what is inside. “It was sort of like that.” Foss’s brother lived in Wooster, Ohio, and the two took the bristles, made paintbrushes and sold them door to door.

A Solid Start The company never left that town in northeastern Ohio. The business and the community feel inextricably linked now, not only by their long shared history but by the fact that so many people who work at Wooster are from Wooster. Or, if not from the town itself, then from a place not too far away.

Tim Yates is the company’s communications and multimedia manager, so most information that Wooster Brush wants to pass on to the outside world crosses his desk at some point. That includes signs, labels and packaging. “If it’s something that goes out the door with the Wooster name on it, I likely have something to do with it,” Yates said.

He was born and raised in Wooster but moved away when he was about 20 years old. During his last semester of college, he went to a job fair.

“Wooster’s factory HR manager was there with a table, of course. I was like, ‘Oh, Wooster Brush. I grew up in Wooster.’ As soon as I said, ‘Oh, I grew up in Wooster,’ they said, ‘What was that? What did you say? Do you have a résumé?’” Yates handed them one, and he imagines they must have scribbled on it “Grew up in Wooster” and stuck it in a drawer somewhere. When they had an opening for a copywriter, he got the call.

For any business, a long history is impressive and a commitment to its employees and their community is admirable. But how does that affect its products? “We have a return rate of less than 0.1 percent,” Crumling said. That means he can talk about Wooster’s brands with a remarkable amount of confidence. “I never have to worry when I talk about the incredible quality of our products,” he added, “because I’m telling the truth.”

• Sponsored By •

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he Wooster Brush Company produces more than 2,000 products for painters of all skill levels.

The company has more than 888,000 square feet of manufacturing, shipping, administrative and warehousing facilities. Our experience in the industry is unmatched—we have 585 dedicated employees with an average of 15 years of service each. High standards of quality and innovation are maintained with inhouse engineering, production, graphic design and printing departments.

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C OM P ANY P RO F I L E S

Kazalas Paint Supplies

Complete Paint & Supplies

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Orange Paint Store

Creative Paint

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New York Owner Chris Kazalas kazalaspaintsupplies.com

hris Kazalas is a third-generation owner of this paint store located in Jackson Heights, a four-block-by-25-block enclave in the storied New York City borough of Queens. His grandfather, Christos Kazalas, opened the store in 1972, and the family has owned it continuously since. Queens residents have a reputation for being smart and tough, and Kazalas Paint’s employees pride themselves on delivering the sort of one-onone, personal attention their customers can’t get at a big-box store.

California Owner Miguel Martinez orangepaintstore.com

iguel Martinez came from Mexico City, Mexico, in 1998 and got a job at Imperial Paints, the familiar chain of West Coast stores. Two years later, he bought the Orange Paint Store and has earned quite a few loyal customers in the subsequent 17 years. Orange is an old town with a good number of homes built before the Great Depression, so the store’s historical pedigree is in line with the area’s early-20th-century zeitgeist. The business opened its doors for the first time in 1928 and had several owners before Martinez took the reins.

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January/February 2018 ALLPRO Independent

Michigan Owner Chris Smrekar completepaintandsupplies.com

hris Smrekar opened his business in March 1996. He did it “from scratch, with a penny in his pocket,” but it wasn’t his first time running a paint store. He managed a Sherwin-Williams location for 13 years in Petoskey, Michigan, but left in 1989 to open his own place. After a brief stint running another paint store, Smrekar opened the one he owns now. In 2017, Complete Paint had the best year in its history, and the surrounding town centers and neighborhoods are growing, with chains like AutoZone and Boston Pizza moving in.

California Owner Michael Yang mycreativepaint.com n 2003, Michael Yang opened a paint store called My Paint Stop. In 2008, he bought Creative Paint and now has nine stores, with a tenth getting ready to open. How did a guy with no formal business training end up running the largest independent paint store chain in San Francisco’s Bay Area? He started working in his uncle’s hardware store at the age of 12 and is a strong adherent to the KISS philosophy. That helps keep his staff on track and engaged. He isn’t sure how many stores he’ll open but believes 50 is a “totally achievable” number.

4946 Joanne Kearney Blvd.

Tampa, FL 33619