Posted by: Diane Capuano
After a year of sharply lower paint sales, paint manufacturers are predicting that 2010 will provide a bit of a rebound…though it won’t happen right away. Key executives for major paint brands told Paint & Decorating Retailer magazine that they expect the paint industry to show signs of improvement in the coming year, but not until the second quarter or possibly even later. And some predict that 2010 will still be relatively flat when compared to the sluggish sales of 2009. Here are some of the highlights of what these executives had to say:
Tom Dougherty, director of marketing for PPG Architectural Coatings, which manufactures the Pittsburgh Paints and Porter Paints brands: “We believe there will be improvement in 2010, though it may not be right away. We’ll start to see it as the year moves on—perhaps in the second quarter or third quarter. Even then, it could just be in certain markets and not across the board.”
Daniele Martin, marketing manager for The Muralo Company: “We see sales being flat through the first quarter, with an improvement after that. Jobs must start coming back before people can start spending again. Things will come back slowly. We estimate that we’ll see positive changes by the third quarter.”
Tom McNicholas, senior vice president for Rust-Oleum Corporation’s Zinsser Brands: “I think the paint market will be anywhere from zero-percent growth to a 5-percent decline. The drops won’t be as dramatic as last year, but last year there were major declines. If the first quarter of 2009 was down 12 percent from the previous year and the first quarter of 2010 is even with last year, then the market is still down 12 percent from two years ago.”
Jeff Spillane, senior product marketing manager of Benjamin Moore & Co: “The housing market will rebound slightly, at least with existing housing sales. Whatever rebound we have overall, it will be a long and drawn-out process. Some markets will continue to remain slow, and some will rebound more than others.”
Tom Hill III, The Coatings Alliance, which manufactures C2 Paint: “We are planning for the year to be overall flat (compared) to 2009. While we see and hear some slight improvement, we are concerned that consumer confidence will not improve for some time, and even when it does improve, the consumer will be spending on a very deliberate basis.”
Dan Cohen, vice president of marketing at California Paints: “Our outlook for 2010 is that the paint market will experience very moderate growth starting at the end of the first quarter. We are seeing signs of stabilization and expect that there will be some bumps on an overall upward trend…I think that the fear period of job loss has had the greatest impact on most homeowners, choosing to put their earnings into a rainy day account. As soon as the confidence of the homeowner gets re-established, their money will definitely go into their homes again.”
Tags: 2010 outlook, paint sales
