SUPERHEROES OF PAINTING SuperPro Painting Systems does it all – and then some – with style and panache. by Nerissa McNaughton
“E
veryone assumes that there is painting going on, but when you look at the numbers it’s a huge $380 billion dollar industry in North America,” says Michael Duchnij, the president and CEO of SuperPro Painting Systems. “When you start driving around and you look at different residential homes and commercial properties many of them will need painting. We call it the itch-cycle, itching to paint!” Duchnij had been in involved with real estate and development ventures for years, but when he teamed up with Kelly Cadwell who had been painting commercial and residential properties since 1979, everything fell into place. “For the most part, all those buildings that require painting are all serviced by mom and pop operators; there wasn’t one company that has any significant national presence,” Duchnij explains. “We saw an opportunity.” What an opportunity it was! The partners branded SuperPro in 2011 and have experienced runaway growth to the tune of 625 per cent since they opened their doors. For most companies, this rapid growth would be completely unsustainable, but for SuperPro, it’s exactly what they wanted, needed and expected. How do they keep up with the demand? “We have invested in a strategy which has become part of our concept. Our processes involve every facet of our business – our four “P’s”: people, pride, paint and performance. It’s all about
being laser focused. We trust our processes,” Duchnij points out. He goes on to say that it’s not just knowing how to paint. It’s having tried and true processes that can be applied to any job, from a single family home, to a sprawling retail complex or manufacturing facility. “We refer to it as our proprietary, SPPM (SuperPro Process Management System).This includes our triple check system and it’s phenomenal! It involves a 50step checklist to make sure we are prepared when we start to paint. Out of those 50 steps, we don’t address painting until we’ve cleared the first 30, and those first 30 steps ensure we are on the same page as our customer and fully prepared for the job. We also inspect every project on an ongoing basis to ensure that we complete the project on time, meeting or exceeding our customer’s expectations.” Follow up is equally important for SuperPro. “We offer all our customers a final opportunity to provide us with some honest feedback. Our customers complete a report card scoring us on all facets of the job and give us an overall rating out of 10. If we receive anything less than eight, we consider the job incomplete and return to rectify any areas that were below the customer’s expectations. The bottom line is that we are not happy until our customer is happy. We aren’t perfect, but we are surely getting there.” With their rapid rise in the industry and tremendous growth, one would be tempted to think that SuperPro is content, but
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