by: Josh Marks
Coastal Paint is located at
What is Coastal Paint & Decorating?
It is a retail paint store. We service the commercial industry, the painting
contractor industry and retail homeowners.
What services do you offer?
We have a name brand paint coating. We also offer computer color matching. We
have 5,000 formulated colors in the store to pick from. There is a high quality
of service for helpful information to people, whether it’s
epoxy coatings that a commercial individual would be using, deck stains,
exterior paint and interior paint that a painting contractor or the do-it-yourself
homeowner would be interested in purchasing.
How and why did you get started in the paint business?
After graduating from college I went to work for a painting contractor and I
got a first-hand, basic knowledge of the industry from him. I then eventually I
had an opportunity to work in a paint store and was promoted to manager and
then shortly after that I married and my wife and I decided to go into business
for ourselves.
What do you like about owning your business?
It’s a chance to control your own destiny, although
there’s always extenuating circumstances that effect you such as the city could
change the traffic pattern on
Who are your typical customers?
Painting contractors are probably our most typical customers, followed by
apartment owners and people that own commercial property, hospitals, hotels,
convalescent centers and the convention center; then filled in by retail
people, homeowners that live in
What are some color trends?
The mossy green tones are popular at the moment in exteriors. Also beige and
grays are becoming popular in exteriors. Off whites are still popular interior
wise. Stronger off whites are also popular.
What new technology in paint have you seen?
No odor, no volatile organic compounds. The volatile organic compounds are what
evaporate and with sunlight create smog. Air quality management districts are
pushing all the manufacturers to make the lowest volatile organic compound
products that they can. In fact, they have set standards for it that they are
going to have to meet.
What are some popular finishes?
Satin sheens, egg shell sheens are the most popular — the lower luster finishes.
They have a richness that is not overpowering and is not a brassy type look to
it and yet flat finishes have sort of a coarseness to
them. Exterior siding, low luster finishes are really popular outside.
Inside, satin sheens and egg shell sheens are becoming more popular than the
flat finishes are. Interior we’re not seeing many sheens over semi gloss,
there’s very few high gloss sheens being used. Most people are looking for the
more subtle, softer sheens.
What are your future plans for Coastal Paint?
We have just put in a new point of sale computer system to better speed up the
customer at checkout. It has bar code scanners. We’re trying to get more
information to the customer on the invoice and keep more information for us
also. We can do the transactions faster for people using credit cards and debit
cards. Remodeling of the store is coming up in a couple of years with the help
of our major manufacturer Benjamin Moore. So our store is going to look more
modern, have a cleaner concept look to it.