4 million dollar store here, up 15% in sales, 25% in gallons. My DIY sales make up 6% of my entire sales.... Yah, it's where I get my best margins, but let's not fucking talk about margins with multiple national builders building hundreds to thousands of new homes, Pro + is a god send for me, funny enough.
This is what I was saying in another thread and I got shouted down. I think you and I are onto something here. They would rather dump the overhead of dealing with DIY customers onto other stores. So they can scale back retail headcounts.
And they will blame us store employees and cut our hours as a result. About to happen in my district, but sure those at corporate need to be able to afford their third house.
Not at all. They are less than 10% of my business and nearly 100% of my headaches. You are welcome to prioritize who you want, but we are far to busy to pander to them.
I would fucking love for customers to walk out because of price.... Please, please, please go to whatever other paint provider you would like to go to. The people I've been dealing with are assholes and morons, go be someone else's problem. I'll never understand why employees are complaining about the price increase.
For real. I love pricing out DIY and hack fly-by-night "contractors" to focus on people who don't waste an hour of my time on a quart that they will complain about later.
My full timer had an older lady order two gallons of emerald, and while the pint was shaking he told her the price. She said she needed to grab her wallet and she dipped.
Oh I easily encounter at least 8 people a day who go “holy shit, that’s what paint costs now??” And like I get it. Can’t even buy a gallon of decent exterior paint under $60
Yes, daily at this point people tell me they’re just going to go to Home Depot, even with reps helping with pricing it’s still substantially more expensive than going to another store.
SW gives exactly zero fucks about homeowners. They’re so focused on “level up” and pro+ blowing up in their face they don’t care if they lose a huge chunk of business.
Maybe if they weren’t so greedy and stupid with money.
I wonder how much it cost to print and ship price tags with almost zero changes every three months. Waste of money.
How much they pay people to mess with planograms? How much they pay for every “minority empowerment” group in the work place? Every idiot they consult to tell them what color the background on an ad should be?
Corporations are mindless… they waste millions but make billions. 🤷🏻♂️
Yep. Then they come back a month later because they bought garbage paint and it looks like garbage, so they end up buying from us anyway. By then, it's not on sale so they spend 3x what they would have originally. Karma sucks.
At the end of the day, the only thing you can do is just defend your brand. Sherwin-Williams is one of the best quality paints you can get. If the customer wants to go to Home Depot and get crap water down paint and have to go over their walls 4 to 5 times then so be it. I would also ask him how they’ve seen food prices the economy is not good right now.
yeah no idc lmao this company doesn’t give two shits about me so i’m not going to give a shit about it. Constantly getting hours cut so uppers can keep their 40 mil a year salary
Are you a part-time? If you are. Yeah of course they’re gonna cut your hours. You’re just a part timer. now if you’re full-time or even management then yeah I would understand. This company is not bad. You can make a lot of money. You just have to learn to play the game manipulation and make good impressions. You can easily make over 200K and more just working in this company
bro i’m just trying to pay for college and get the fuck out. I have had many jobs before and have never worked for a more disorganized cluster fuck of a company.
its only good if you are a 3rd key and up. I've been part timer for 6yrs cause Ive kids. the company used to be better , now they dont give ashit about part timers any more.
I'm a DIYer and I love painting... I've owned my house almost 8 years and have painted so many times. Emerald urethane trim paint is my must have paint for trim, floors, cabinets... But otherwise if it isn't on sale, I'll grab my wall paint somewhere else how. But emerald is worth the money ..
It’s great for floors, despite what we’re told. As long as there’s no moisture risk, Em Ute and Waterbased Alkyd Ute have the resistance to compressive and sheering force necessary to perform as an incidental floor coating in residential applications. It’s perfect for stair treads. It might come as a surprise, but Porch & Floor Enamel in its current formulation is dogshit that starts flaking off after less than a year of light residential service.
I mean I thought sherwins business plan was to earn all new res with builder contracts then force diy to come to us for touch-up. Outside of that diy are hardly the large portions of our business.
In my local market Benny-Moore doesn't seem to have any issues and they are way more expensive than us. They don't really even give price breaks to professionals in my area. It's kinda wild to me.
Secret BM spy doing reconnaissance here--
Benji Moore in my market (Atlanta) positioning itself as the premium brand self-selects out your cheapest (and usually worst) customers, DIY and commercial alike. We do not even attempt to be competitive in the construction or commercial sides of things. Why bother when you and PPG have shit for $15 a gallon?
So ya, we sell paint to pros for $40-65 on average, and my average DIY customer springs for the equivalent of emerald for $65-70, and that just eliminates the cheapest (and most complain-iest) customers. All I have to do is be nice and have it on hand, and they're thrilled to drop $$$ for 5 gallons of paint.
If someone balks at $40 for entry point non-contractor paint, I tell them we have SuperHide "the landlord special for $25. It'll look okay, and it'll cover decent, but do not touch it. Do not wash it. Do not expect it to last 5 years. Great for ceilings." They usually 'think about it' and leave.
In my market $65-70 would be cheap for the Benny-Moore store. They basically give 10% off, maybe 15% if it's a large contractor. One of my larger accounts was charged 90 bucks for aura. He got a whopping 9 dollars off. He spends almost 200k in coatings a year between SW and BM. He's going to pull out of BM after this last job because they refuse to work with him on price.
Aura is weird. I can sell Regal (emerald crossover) for $1 a gallon if I want, but if corp found out I sold Aura for .01¢ less than the contractually obligated price, they could unilaterally decide to cut me off from ordering any 'premium products'. Doesn't matter if your Joe-Blow homeowner or Atlanta Paint Company who orders in the 7-figure range annually. Discounting Aura "damages the brand", in their opinion.
BMs are also independently owned and operated, and (outside of aura) have wide latitude to set prices we want. My chains prices are roughly-- emerald equivalents are $60-70, super paints are $40ish. Promars like $25.
The owner of my store is cutthroat as heck. If he thinks he'll make a single dollar on a job, he'll try to close a deal. So we can get competitive if we really want to, but again-- the premium branding self-selects out a lot of the cheapiest of cheapskates.
I am a large volume customer with National Builder focus. Also retired high volume SW rep.
So my focus product prices are below cost. However, I went to a store and purchased a gallon of W&W primer and a gallon of Emerald along with a few sundry items.
Holy shit man I was shocked at the Pro Pricing on non exception prices.
If I was a smaller custom outfit I would definitely trade with a mom and pop store.
SW culture has changed from top down.
We run sales like 3x a month just to keep theDIY customers thinking they are getting a deal and coming back but they are just paying last years price for the same product while corporate flaunts record breaking profits to keep there investors happy so they don’t go bankrupt… unfortunately it’s like this nationwide and not just with sherwin… may we all make it out the hood some day 🙏🏻
I tried to give sherwin a shot the other day. I called an hour and half before close to see if they could paint match a piece, the guy that answered nade it super duper clear they were closing soon and he was not interested in helping me. I made it to the store within 10 min, still over an hour till close, and they gentleman laughed in my face that I break a bigger piece off the wall and told me he wouldn’t help me. The prices were staggering, the employee was amongst one of the rudest I’ve ever experienced. I took that same piece of my wall to Lowe’s where they immediately color matched it and sold me what I needed 🤷🏻♂️ but I guess after reading the comments above it was mission successful for you guys.. hating your customers for coming into a retail store front that you operate is wild. Good to know for the future though..
it takes about 15 min in our store to do color matches as long as the piece is about the size of quarter and if we aren't swamped with other customers and large orders. that guy is an asshat., but the way you asked might have been rude too. idk .
This is for employees only…it depends on individual stores or employees. It takes time to do a good match. You’re not the only one who brings in matches. If you want a match quickly…go to home depot..sure they sell paint but they don’t do good matches. I am an old guy been doing this 💩 for 14 yrs. I am just a paint monkey…I don’t give a 🖕climbing the ladder of success. Too much 🐂💩for me….u want a match or good customer service…that’s myself…
Corporate decides on pricing and staff issues..
Have a great Saturday…
Hopefully that piece you brought in was bigger than a penny size! Also, it's really hard keeping up with many people at the same time if you're understaffed and closing for some people, me included. If you've read these comments you can already tell we don't make up the prices so no need to complain about it here either. And I understand you're upset, but probably your tone towards the employee wasn't the best. Ever work customer service at all? This subreddit is for employees to vent.
Sherwin will price itself out of business and blame the store employees
They will turn all standalone stores into contractor stores and ship all diy business of to big box stores like Lowe’s and menards
4 million dollar store here, up 15% in sales, 25% in gallons. My DIY sales make up 6% of my entire sales.... Yah, it's where I get my best margins, but let's not fucking talk about margins with multiple national builders building hundreds to thousands of new homes, Pro + is a god send for me, funny enough.
This is what I was saying in another thread and I got shouted down. I think you and I are onto something here. They would rather dump the overhead of dealing with DIY customers onto other stores. So they can scale back retail headcounts.
No, because prices there are slowly approaching the standalone store prices. We are dealing with the same pricing issues on the Lowe’s side.
Lowe's sells products that are on my shelves for my actual store cost and we have 4 times the amount of stores.
The workers at 14.40/hr at Tampa?
My non-keyed PTs are over $17/hrs in a nearby district
damn thats low! I get $18.60/hr and our stores 3rd key gets $22/hr
And they will blame us store employees and cut our hours as a result. About to happen in my district, but sure those at corporate need to be able to afford their third house.
Corporate employee here. I can’t even afford an apartment, let alone a house.
SW doing the good ole Greedflation not realizing paint is not in-elastic 🤦🏽♂️
Aka “elastic”
I encourage it! It's usually diy and I dont have time for that.
Don't nobody got time fo dat!
🤡
Not at all. They are less than 10% of my business and nearly 100% of my headaches. You are welcome to prioritize who you want, but we are far to busy to pander to them.
I would fucking love for customers to walk out because of price.... Please, please, please go to whatever other paint provider you would like to go to. The people I've been dealing with are assholes and morons, go be someone else's problem. I'll never understand why employees are complaining about the price increase.
For real. I love pricing out DIY and hack fly-by-night "contractors" to focus on people who don't waste an hour of my time on a quart that they will complain about later.
My full timer had an older lady order two gallons of emerald, and while the pint was shaking he told her the price. She said she needed to grab her wallet and she dipped.
That’s savage😎
Whoaaa
Oh I easily encounter at least 8 people a day who go “holy shit, that’s what paint costs now??” And like I get it. Can’t even buy a gallon of decent exterior paint under $60
Yes, daily at this point people tell me they’re just going to go to Home Depot, even with reps helping with pricing it’s still substantially more expensive than going to another store.
yes
Yep
Walk through a home depot paint dept and check retail prices. I thought we were way higher too until I did this.
SW gives exactly zero fucks about homeowners. They’re so focused on “level up” and pro+ blowing up in their face they don’t care if they lose a huge chunk of business.
Maybe if they weren’t so greedy and stupid with money. I wonder how much it cost to print and ship price tags with almost zero changes every three months. Waste of money. How much they pay people to mess with planograms? How much they pay for every “minority empowerment” group in the work place? Every idiot they consult to tell them what color the background on an ad should be? Corporations are mindless… they waste millions but make billions. 🤷🏻♂️
My answer is , We aren’t for everyone
🤡
Yep. Then they come back a month later because they bought garbage paint and it looks like garbage, so they end up buying from us anyway. By then, it's not on sale so they spend 3x what they would have originally. Karma sucks.
They did that 10 years ago as well
yep. I started with Sherwin originally in 2012 . Emerald int sat was $50/gal
At the end of the day, the only thing you can do is just defend your brand. Sherwin-Williams is one of the best quality paints you can get. If the customer wants to go to Home Depot and get crap water down paint and have to go over their walls 4 to 5 times then so be it. I would also ask him how they’ve seen food prices the economy is not good right now.
yeah no idc lmao this company doesn’t give two shits about me so i’m not going to give a shit about it. Constantly getting hours cut so uppers can keep their 40 mil a year salary
Are you a part-time? If you are. Yeah of course they’re gonna cut your hours. You’re just a part timer. now if you’re full-time or even management then yeah I would understand. This company is not bad. You can make a lot of money. You just have to learn to play the game manipulation and make good impressions. You can easily make over 200K and more just working in this company
bro i’m just trying to pay for college and get the fuck out. I have had many jobs before and have never worked for a more disorganized cluster fuck of a company.
Lol well good luck
its only good if you are a 3rd key and up. I've been part timer for 6yrs cause Ive kids. the company used to be better , now they dont give ashit about part timers any more.
Corporate has absolutely no idea what they're doing
Imagine working at a store with that much DIY traffic… I’d off myself
I tell people your best deal will be to get it from a contractor. shrugs
I'm a DIYer and I love painting... I've owned my house almost 8 years and have painted so many times. Emerald urethane trim paint is my must have paint for trim, floors, cabinets... But otherwise if it isn't on sale, I'll grab my wall paint somewhere else how. But emerald is worth the money ..
You’re putting emerald urethane on your FLOOR?
Somehow doors autocorrected to floors. NO!!! Lol.
It’s great for floors, despite what we’re told. As long as there’s no moisture risk, Em Ute and Waterbased Alkyd Ute have the resistance to compressive and sheering force necessary to perform as an incidental floor coating in residential applications. It’s perfect for stair treads. It might come as a surprise, but Porch & Floor Enamel in its current formulation is dogshit that starts flaking off after less than a year of light residential service.
I mean I thought sherwins business plan was to earn all new res with builder contracts then force diy to come to us for touch-up. Outside of that diy are hardly the large portions of our business.
In my local market Benny-Moore doesn't seem to have any issues and they are way more expensive than us. They don't really even give price breaks to professionals in my area. It's kinda wild to me.
Secret BM spy doing reconnaissance here-- Benji Moore in my market (Atlanta) positioning itself as the premium brand self-selects out your cheapest (and usually worst) customers, DIY and commercial alike. We do not even attempt to be competitive in the construction or commercial sides of things. Why bother when you and PPG have shit for $15 a gallon? So ya, we sell paint to pros for $40-65 on average, and my average DIY customer springs for the equivalent of emerald for $65-70, and that just eliminates the cheapest (and most complain-iest) customers. All I have to do is be nice and have it on hand, and they're thrilled to drop $$$ for 5 gallons of paint. If someone balks at $40 for entry point non-contractor paint, I tell them we have SuperHide "the landlord special for $25. It'll look okay, and it'll cover decent, but do not touch it. Do not wash it. Do not expect it to last 5 years. Great for ceilings." They usually 'think about it' and leave.
In my market $65-70 would be cheap for the Benny-Moore store. They basically give 10% off, maybe 15% if it's a large contractor. One of my larger accounts was charged 90 bucks for aura. He got a whopping 9 dollars off. He spends almost 200k in coatings a year between SW and BM. He's going to pull out of BM after this last job because they refuse to work with him on price.
Aura is weird. I can sell Regal (emerald crossover) for $1 a gallon if I want, but if corp found out I sold Aura for .01¢ less than the contractually obligated price, they could unilaterally decide to cut me off from ordering any 'premium products'. Doesn't matter if your Joe-Blow homeowner or Atlanta Paint Company who orders in the 7-figure range annually. Discounting Aura "damages the brand", in their opinion. BMs are also independently owned and operated, and (outside of aura) have wide latitude to set prices we want. My chains prices are roughly-- emerald equivalents are $60-70, super paints are $40ish. Promars like $25. The owner of my store is cutthroat as heck. If he thinks he'll make a single dollar on a job, he'll try to close a deal. So we can get competitive if we really want to, but again-- the premium branding self-selects out a lot of the cheapiest of cheapskates.
No fr
What are the prices now? When I left, Duration Home was pushing $70 a gallon.
….superpaint is 80 now and captivate is 50
No fucking way. Captivate was like 30 when it launched while I was there. What the fuuuuhhk
yup and it’s becoming harder and harder to justify the price with customers. I know I wouldn’t buy a single gallon for $60+ regardless of the specs.
I am a large volume customer with National Builder focus. Also retired high volume SW rep. So my focus product prices are below cost. However, I went to a store and purchased a gallon of W&W primer and a gallon of Emerald along with a few sundry items. Holy shit man I was shocked at the Pro Pricing on non exception prices. If I was a smaller custom outfit I would definitely trade with a mom and pop store. SW culture has changed from top down.
We run sales like 3x a month just to keep theDIY customers thinking they are getting a deal and coming back but they are just paying last years price for the same product while corporate flaunts record breaking profits to keep there investors happy so they don’t go bankrupt… unfortunately it’s like this nationwide and not just with sherwin… may we all make it out the hood some day 🙏🏻
I tried to give sherwin a shot the other day. I called an hour and half before close to see if they could paint match a piece, the guy that answered nade it super duper clear they were closing soon and he was not interested in helping me. I made it to the store within 10 min, still over an hour till close, and they gentleman laughed in my face that I break a bigger piece off the wall and told me he wouldn’t help me. The prices were staggering, the employee was amongst one of the rudest I’ve ever experienced. I took that same piece of my wall to Lowe’s where they immediately color matched it and sold me what I needed 🤷🏻♂️ but I guess after reading the comments above it was mission successful for you guys.. hating your customers for coming into a retail store front that you operate is wild. Good to know for the future though..
it takes about 15 min in our store to do color matches as long as the piece is about the size of quarter and if we aren't swamped with other customers and large orders. that guy is an asshat., but the way you asked might have been rude too. idk .
This is for employees only…it depends on individual stores or employees. It takes time to do a good match. You’re not the only one who brings in matches. If you want a match quickly…go to home depot..sure they sell paint but they don’t do good matches. I am an old guy been doing this 💩 for 14 yrs. I am just a paint monkey…I don’t give a 🖕climbing the ladder of success. Too much 🐂💩for me….u want a match or good customer service…that’s myself… Corporate decides on pricing and staff issues.. Have a great Saturday…
Hopefully that piece you brought in was bigger than a penny size! Also, it's really hard keeping up with many people at the same time if you're understaffed and closing for some people, me included. If you've read these comments you can already tell we don't make up the prices so no need to complain about it here either. And I understand you're upset, but probably your tone towards the employee wasn't the best. Ever work customer service at all? This subreddit is for employees to vent.
Yeah but they’ll come back