I love our Readers

A couple of weeks ago, Christian and I published a Favorites survey. People have been filling out the newspaper form and mailing them in! Also, they can go online and fill it out - it's very interesting to see what people are thinking. You can really tell what neighborhood they come from simply by looking at the favorite stores they list.

Radio fav's range from NPR to oldies. Cleaning products go from vinegar to homemade with essential oils (I'm always so impressed with people who can take the time to craft things like that!) to high-end products like Calderra. We've had more than one shout-out for Dove as favorite soap! I think a standout answer is to the category of Housecleaner: "You never indulge this info!"

I'm not sure how we'll publish the answers, it should be interesting!

Wacky Weather

I am so discombobulated from all the snow days, I thought it was the 11th and not the 17th! Where did all the days go? I mean, I was truly shocked it was the 17th today!

January is a slow time of year in the paint store world, but it's my busy time. It's the only time I can get our store and department managers together for planning the upcoming season plus there is a lot of work going on for C2 Paint. Oh, and that darn school auction is happening in 2 months! While that seems far away, it's actually screaming upon our heels.

Christian and I are strategizing ideas for taking our Design Files concept to a new level. We have over 75 columns in the can, but what should we do in addition to our newspaper gig? How can we best leverage our experience and make this thing even we have together even more fun?

Snow Day in Seattle

Yes, it snowed again last night.

For the majority of the country, if it snows, it snows - and it's just business as usual. Here in Seattle, everything gets mucked up. We probably have less than an inch of snow, but the schools were canceled today.

The main concern is the safety of the students who are being bussed. Perhaps there are parts of the city that were hit harder - in any case, it's not the snow itself that causes the trouble, it's the slick of ice the develops when the sun sets and the temperature drops.

So, I am being "Mom" today. It's fun! We just got back from the neighbors who fed us hot chocolate and cookies. What's to complain about? Life is good.

Cranky Columnist

Okay, really. I mean, really.

Christian and I had a column run on Saturday, and it invited people to fill out a form (online or snail mail) identifying their favorite things. For example:
Favorite Stores
Hardware
Lighting
Tile
..etc.

Favorite Vendors
Florist
Painter
Gardener
... and so forth

Personal Encounters
Soap
Linens
Candles
... you get the picture

It's been fun to read the responses from readers. They actually take the time to create lists of fav's - HOWEVER - there is a business that has been stuffing the ballot box, and it's getting very annoying! There are multiple emails listing this business, and it's rather obvious; I mean, "hello!" do they think we we would be too stupid to not notice?

Evolution, Not Revolution

I am in-between conference calls at the moment.

Today, the C2 Marketing Team (myself, Harry and Jeff) are doing final interviews with a number of different firms. Conference call city! I dug out the old set of headphones, so my ear wouldn't hurt!

It's interesting... there are many directions we could take the brand, and all have their place. Nothing like the nightmare (or night-Meara) of a few years ago. Our challenge is to determine the best direction going forward for the next 3 years. It's exciting, but we don't want to be swayed by the excitement, we want to make the right choice for the long-haul.

More later, I gotta grab a cup of tea and call in to my next conference.....

Brand Identity

I'm reading an interesting article about brand identity and the adventure/risk of rebranding in Inc. magazine.

It's very relevant to what I am working on right now with both the Daly's Wood Finishes labels and C2 Paint. I have only read part of the article, I can't wait to finish it and see if there is anything I can learn from Dave's Insanity Hot Sauce company's experience...

If anything, our adventures with redesign are exciting, nerve-wracking, and can leave one a bit tired and jaded. Why jaded? There is the snake-oil aspect of branding that one needs to be cautious of buying into. Most important to me is trying to communicate a genuineness behind the gloss.

Winter Holiday

I'm on vacation this week. It's rather nice; lounging in new flannel pajamas until lunch, playing with the kids and their haul and STILL eating way too much. What more can I ask for?

The Power of Paint

Here in the Northwest, we are still recovering from a MASSIVE power outage that occured last week. Reports are now saying that 1.5 million households were without power. It was kinda stormy.

This is something I wouldn't have been able to guess:
People will come into a paint store looking to buy product - even if there is no electricity in that store! Not only that, but they will try to choose paint colors in the dark.

Our Bellevue store was only down for a day, luckily, but even so, we had a smattering of traffic. To sell paint, you need electricity to tint and shake the stuff. On Friday (day of no power), we actually sold white primer and white paint - only color where you DON'T need power!

I don't know if they thought they might try and kill a few hours by painting at home, since there was nothing else to do.... but it was too cold even for that.

Our production factory flooded in a major way. There was nothing to do (besides unplug everything) except wait until the storm subsided. Water was literally GUSHING in from a drain spout. Water covered the complete basement floor. Thankfully, our finished goods are stored on palettes and raised shelves, they escaped unharmed.

Here is our factory clean-up crew - don't they look good in their matching rain boots?

Weekend Party Preparations

This Saturday is the Daly's Holiday Party. We are returning to Hale's Brewery in Fremont (yum!), and I am soooo behind! I am in charge of creating the annual slideshow. Nowadays, it's Powerpoint, but I think we will always call it the slideshow.

I get to create a story around all the different employee photos we've collected over the year. But I haven't really started yet - I am searching for a theme... Last year it was a tour of Dalysnorts School of Witchraft and Wizardry. This year??? Wish me luck!

My Brain Hurts

Christian and I took a reconnaissance trip across the lake (also known as "going to Bellevue") to research Storage solutions for a feature article coming up in January.

There is a lot out there. My brain hurts.

Amazing Lighting

Last night I held a movie fest (number in attendance, one) with my favorite Jane Austen film, Persuasion. It's a BBC production that was filmed at least 10 years ago and it's not like a Hollywood high budget affair by any means. The movie was filmed under natural light conditions - so the candlelight in the evening scenes was lit with those actual candles. Gorgeous!

It lent the film a real feeling of authenticity. And it confirms the fact that we ALL look good in candlelight!

I think "Persuasion" would make a great C2 paint color name. Hmmm... perhaps a flattering candlelight pink?

Getting Ready for the Holidays

I can't believe this.... I am actually considering purchasing 2 FAKE topiary-like pre-lit Christmas trees for the front porch! I have a tough time with artificial/fake/faux - whatever you want to call it, I like REAL.

But, these two 4' trees are kinda cool. Plus they'd dress up the front door. I'll let you know if I actually do it. It depends on how they look in the store.

Speaking of real - we purchased our two Christmas trees last weekend. One for the family room, stuffed with kid decorations and the other for the living room with all types of crystal ornaments, birds and ephemera.

Yes, I'm picky about the trees (is this really a shock?). They have to be noble fir, the boughs are strong and there is room for ornaments to dangle between branches. I am a white light or single colored light fan, the multiple-colored lights are a concession for the family room - but even I admit they add a festive air to the kid tree!

Let the season glow.

What are readers searching for?

One of the main reasons people find this blog is because they are searching for "cool paint colors", or "interesting color combinations". I find this interesting, but not surprising, because to me, color is one of our universal languages.

There are always cultural accents (but that just keeps our "language" fresh and interesting!), like white symbolizing purity in the West and death in the East - but for the most part, color needs few words to understand. Here are a few quick examples:

• Red - means passion, either in love or anger
• Blue - is calming or can mean depressing
• Yellow - ranging from life giving and energetic to extreme edginess

Both positive and negative emotions are tied in with color and how they affect us both physically and emotionally.

One reason we are looking for direction with color is that is EVERYWHERE. In the design related field, it is part of every single choice we need to make for our homes. This can be stressful, because even switchplates have color choices! So many choices can become overwhelming.

On the other hand, color choices give us a lot of control over our environment and we can help to create the feelings we want gain from our environment. Paint is the perfect example here: You can change the nature of a room by simply changing the color on the walls. It's also one of the cheapest design tools - a $40 bucket of paint goes a lot further to transforming a space than a $40 yard of fabric. Both the fabric and the paint do have a commonality: one of the basic elements we of how we relate to both is via their color.

What colors turn you on? I find that my personal paint color palatte for my home is become both lighter and muckier (these are not exactly mutually exclusive characteristics) - heavy colors aren't making my heart soar, right now. Neither are colors that are too, well, colorful. I suppose we could call them saturated, but the effect is that they are too colorful and distracting from the activity going on in the room.

Attention to Details

I've been spending some more time at home recently and it's gotten me to thinking about the objects we interact with on a daily basis, and the pleasure we can get by using them. I think about how we can convert daily chores from drudgery into tactile experiences.

For example, I use a counter top spray by Mrs Meyers. It's lemon-verbena scent is unusual, doesn't smell artificial, and the packaging makes me happy. So I don't mind spritzing and wiping down the counters, in fact it's kinda fun. As an added benefit, the product is vegetable-based and natural, so it's not bad for me or the environment.

Another cleaning tool I really value is my feather duster. This one is great because if my 5-year old sees me pull it out, she grabs it out of my hand and goes to town (okay, it happens to be pink...). Makes my job a snap!

Interesting Question

The other day my son posed an interesting question - and while it had ABSOLUTELY nothing to do with design, paint or decorating - it is worthy of discussion for its pop-culture ramifications:

If Han Solo and Jack Sparrow were engaged in hand-to-hand combat - who would win???

While we were contemplating this, we came up with another character dilemma with no clear answer:

Who would win if Legolas was pitted against Will Turner?

See what I mean, it's a dilemma!

The Mad Dash

Spent a lot of time painting this weekend - I've got to say that I really like using C2 Paint. I didn't do any taping, no dropcloths AT ALL, and the paint was so creamy and easy to apply. Wow, it works like it's supposed to!

Just a little more rolling in the kitchen and we'll be ready for the holidays. I didn't use one square inch of tape in the kitchen around the cupboards or moulding - no drips, no mess and it was quick! I guess that's what quality paints are supposed to do, but it's always nice when things perform as promised.

Cool Wallpaper Site

Check out this wallpaper site, Flavor Paper. It's full of exciting, super-cool patterns and you feel hip just looking at their product! The papers are hand-screened, and the colors pop. An eyeball feast.

In our industry we keep hearing murmurs that wallpaper is coming back. It's probably a 5th of what it used to be in the high-flying early 80's... when I see designs like this, it makes me aware that there is a whole high-end design culture that has ignored the naysayers and has carved their own path. These trend setters indicate that there will be a trickle-down into the middle market - so maybe wallpaper IS coming back.

Just in the last 6 months we have seen a rather sharp increase in the wallpaper category in our stores and this has resulted in more orders.

At Last!!!!!!

So. Holidays are quickly approaching and it's beyond time to repaint the living room, potentially the dining room and for sure the kitchen. We've had swatches on the living room walls since summer. Beige swatches. Absolutely wrong.

The kitchen has been a saga of sorts. You'd think with all my work with color that choosing my own would be a snap. Right? Well, the chocolate walls are not making me a happy paint princess. A color might work just fine and still be wrong, that's the situation we have going on in the kitchen. I love to eat chocolate, but it's not so great for the north-facing kitchen.

Regarding the living room - much as it pains me to say this, it's true: Mom was right again!

She suggested a color to try for the living room, C2's Bamboo. While it's too dark, I had a C2 Sampler pint made of the formula at both 75% and 50% strength. I even had a 50% formulation made with no black pigment, just to see if the spectrophotometer could match to color accurately without using any black pigments.

It's great! I think my trick of eliminating the black pigment kept the lightened color from mushing out to a blechy greige tone. Sometimes lightened colors can loose their character and vibrancy when cut down too far. Then they become shades of grey on the wall. Or they look like "why bother" versions of the richer color - too safe and weakened from the original.

It looks great in both the living room AND the kitchen. Surprising about the kitchen, who knew the same color would look so great in both spaces? It's just a great color that supports all the millwork and furnishings - I love it. I might try lightening the living room formulation a tad more, maybe C2 Bamboo at about 40%... just a titch lighter... but even so, I really like the color a lot. It's quite neutral without resorting to safe beige. Lots of yellow/olive undertones, it's great. I can't wait to get it painted!

Who knows, maybe this color will even last in our house more than 6 months...

Help Wanted! Update

I took my recent post that cried for "Help Wanted!" (October 23rd) and turned it into a newspaper ad. We got some real-life actual responses from it! Hmmm.... maybe we are on to something here. Actually show our personality up front and find people who are interested in contributing to our store culture...

Back Again!

Hello. I'm back. I know, I know, it's been 2 weeks since I've posted! What kind of girl do you think I am?

I've been rather busy, sorry I haven't called. Or written. Or emailed. Blah, blah, blah.

Before we get any further into it, I need to ask you, "Did you vote today?". Hope so.

I saw the finals on our Wood Stain labels! Final proofing is underway right now. I can't wait to show you how they look! Soooooooooo much better!

I spent the weekend in Chicago with a couple of my C2 partners. We closed down this great bar called Blue Chicago before finishing the evening at a pub (who's name I just can't recall!). I had to send almost all my travel clothes out to the cleaners - I forgot what decades of smoky bars does to an outfit.

Of course, we worked most of the weekend. We have a great marketing team, and we were planning our strategy for the next few years. I can't tell you what we have in the hopper, but let me just say that it's definitely going to be a "panty dropper" when we come out with our new initiatives. Yup. So cool. The designer in me screams, "I want it now!"

Speaking of cool, check out this paint store. It's called Colori Chicago and they exclusively sell C2 Paint, no other brand.

What I love about Colori, is that the owner, Michelle Herzog has NEVER owned a paint store before. So she doesn't come to the table with a lot of preconceived ideas about what will or won't work. For example, all her sundries are displayed in tote bins. So her shop looks more like a studio than a paint store. Why not?


She's gotten some great local press, and she is getting noticed. Which is great, because it's giving her some momentum to get her new baby off the ground.

We gave a Designer Presentation at Michelle's store on Saturday. I find those experiences very interesting. We have such a compelling story to share, and we get pretty deep into what happened, who the players are and why this affects the product we produce for our customers. It is so much more information than people are used to getting, I think - it's not just the surface "marketing" stuff, but the real story behind C2 Paint. Gets 'em every time.

Personally? I still haven't found my own color scheme for the living room and kitchen! But I'm getting closer...