Paint & Home Décor
Paint Retailer’s View We asked Kevin Coghlan, former owner of award-winning store, MRCB Ltd in Dublin, for his thoughts on paint retailing mid and post pandemic. important now that we take time to reflect on the past year or so and learn from the craziness. When the dust settles, it’s important to review our customer services and policies with the sales team and everyone who engages with our customers. For instance, for each sale do we establish if our customer is doing the painting project themselves, or getting a professional decorator? Kevin Coghlan.
Kevin has over 40 years experience specialising in the paints and wallcovering industry. Beginning his career in Dods of Mary Street at the age of 14, before joining his family’s businesses, Coghlan`s Paints and MRCB Paints, where they introduced many iconic paint brands such as Farrow & Ball, Paint Library, Benjamin Moore etc. to the Irish market, in their Dublin City centre showrooms. He also worked for Colourtrend Paints as Sales Director, and got to understand the manufacturing and marketing side of the premium paint business. Kevin has carried out extensive paint product and customer sales training on a regular basis for over 30 years with all their team members.
Paint sales are up, but who are our Customers? There’s no doubt, 2020 was a great year for paint sales. Because of the pandemic lockdowns and the fantastic weather, people took it upon themselves to decorate and spruce up their homes. We all know a lot of our regular customers, but what about the customers we had never seen before or who contacted us through social media or emails? • • •
Did we engage with them and make them feel welcome? Did we presume they have been to our stores before? Have they just moved into a new home or new housing estate in the area?
These are opportunities to make an impression and possibly make customers for life. First impressions are so important and can create a positive long-term relationship, if handled correctly. It was a crazy unprecedented year and at times extremely busy for everyone, with no time to really engage with the customers. It’s
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If they are painting themselves, have they painted before or are they complete novices? If they are novices, it gives you a great opportunity to literally take them by the hand and explain everything in detail, from the quality and benefits of paint to the advantages of using a premium quality paint, applicators and tools etc. and perhaps increasing your add-on sales. They will leave your store very impressed by your knowledge, and possibly somewhat confused, because they won’t have grasped it all. By the time they’ve finished the painting, they’ll have appreciated your expertise and made sense of most of what you taught them. They will remember you the next time they have a paint project. You wouldn’t know any of this if you didn’t ask the questions or engage with them initially. Maybe they are experienced at painting and appreciate quality paints? Maybe they’ve used less expensive paints before, and understand you get what you pay for. This type of customer is happy to pay a premium for quality. All too often, I hear products being offered based on price rather than benefits, performance, and application properties, and usually it’s because the salesperson hasn’t the training or knowledge themselves. If the salespeople doesn’t have the knowledge and understanding of the products they sell, you can’t expect them to be able to sell paint at premium prices. We as retailers need to look at the level of training, (both product knowledge and customer service) given and offered to our teams. There are many moving parts in the retail paint industry (technological, environmental, social media and online) and we need to keep up with the rapid changes. This is an ongoing investment in your business and is essential to your success in the future. 2020 may have been a great year for paint, but how many May/June 2021
