Behind the colorful counter
Roy G. Biv is the second most important person serving the retailer’s paint department. Who’s he? He’s the colors of the rainbow: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet. And he plays a role in every store that sells paint. This is because researchers who study customer behavior agree that retailers don’t really sell paint. They sell color.
Who is important person No. 1? Skip to the end to find out.
But first, it’s easy to see that hardware stores are boosting their paint game. The latest entrant to raise the flag of game-changing shopping experiences is Do it Best Corp., which unveiled the Color Bar at its recent market in Indianapolis. The design has some colorful end cap features. My favorite is the Door Project display. (Take the visual tour at HBSDealer.com.)
“Why paint?” asked Nick Talarico, Do it Best’s VP of sales and business development. “Because paint continues to be a key differentiator for driving consumer traffic into stores.”
Do it Best isn’t the first company to take the path toward sophisticated merchandising of its paint offering.
Ace Hardware seems to have gotten the ball rolling with its launch of the Paint Studio in late 2013. It was based on the idea that customers seek a more style-inspired and personalized paint shopping experience, as opposed to a traditional trip to the hardware store. Ace and Valspar partnered to bring the studio into Ace stores, a move described as a $75 million investment.
At the time, an Ace executive described the studio concept as “new colors, trusted brands and a boutique feel specializing in personalized attention and service.”
Last year at its spring market, Orgill unveiled Paint Works, a store-within-a-store concept co-created with Valspar. Orgill’s Phillip Walker called it a “merchandising system to drive home the color in a store-within-a-store concept.” Earlier this year, Benjamin Moore rolled out a dramatic “Store of the Future.”
Also earlier this year, True Value adjusted its paint offering in terms of product and efficiency, with a True Value 2-4-1 program — two brands, four price points, one color system. It also added a line of Coronado paint from Benjamin Moore to fill in a gap at a higher $30-and-above price point, which is the fastest-growing segment of the paint market.
One winner of the paint retail renaissance is the customer. But among retailers, who will win? That brings us to the most important person in paint: the person behind the counter.
To the extent the in-store staff is knowledgeable, experienced, friendly and helpful, that’s the extent of the success any paint department is going to have in this colorful — and growing — market.