By Les Yoder, Account Executive
From our experience working with and evaluating coating manufacturers and their products, the old adage holds true: you get what you pay for. In this market, it’s tempting to go with a paint that is a few dollars cheaper than another one, but that isn’t always the best idea.
Potential Risks
To use a wood example, you can take the best built piece of furniture and put a poor-quality finish on it and it won’t sell. You can take a poorly built piece of furniture and put a high-quality finish on it, and it will sell. Why commit so much time and money into high-quality craftsmanship and hard work only to coat it in less than high-quality coatings? The key is to know what kind of finish you’re buying.
How to Prevent This Mistake
In order to make decisions based on more than just price per gallon, know the questions to ask and what you want to get out of your coating. Ask your vendor to prove that a certain paint meets your specs. That burden of proof might call for making up a batch of paint to be checked for color using a Color-Eye tool that measures color, gloss and other characteristics. Typically, a general industrial client will keep this proof on record, and we repeat the test with each batch.
For every coating type, organizations are in place to develop and maintain quality standards to be followed. For example, Kitchen Cabinet Manufacturers Association (KCMA) administers nationally recognized performance standards for cabinets that include four tests for finishes. Business + Institutional Furniture Manufacturers Association (BIFMA) creates safety and performance standards for business furniture manufacturers. When a product has KCMA’s or BIFMA’s support behind it, distributors, retailers and consumers can be assured they are looking at a high-quality product. For your industry, look for industry certifications that show the quality of a paint — not just price.
How Accessa partners
At Accessa, we often calculate the applied cost for a specific part or application. This information provides a much more comprehensive assessment of the value of a gallon of paint. We can also tailor a quality control procedure that fits a client’s specific needs so they can get the facts they need to make smart choices.
If we have a customer who is about to make a poor coating choice just because of price, we are straightforward in letting them know it’s a bad choice. We provide them with all the information they need to make a decision and then let them choose. We also prompt customers who might not be asking questions about the differences in coatings so that we can guide them through the purchase. If they choose to purchase a cheaper product that we feel isn’t up to their needs, we can rest assured we have made clear our recommendation.
Contact me at 317-879-2055 if you need help assessing the value of a gallon of paint.