NAPA Denver Genuine Parts
Genuine Paints is not the traditional NAPA retail operation. The Denver, Colorado, store has separate paint offerings and even employs paint-dedicated personnel, differing from most NAPA locations that provide mixed inventories.
“Along with dedicated paint personnel, we have a separate entrance and storefront for paints,” explains Craig Meade, the store’s manager. “That is unlike other NAPA Auto Parts stores, which may carry paint but cater more to the auto parts side of NAPA.”
Adopting this format has doubled paint sales over a traditional NAPA layout, with the store exhibiting nearly double-digit, year-over-year increases in gross paint sales. These numbers have positioned Genuine Paints as a U.S. Top 10 NAPA stand-alone paint store.
Genuine Paints, technically a NAPA Auto Parts store owned by Genuine Parts Co., shares an inventory with Denver’s largest NAPA store and is located in the same building a the company’s Denver distribution center.
“Fast, friendly service” is how Meade explains Genuine Paints’ business style, while crediting the store’s success to maintaining a stable business with knowledgeable employees and ample, correct inventory.
“We believe that every customer should be treated the way we would like to be treated if we were the customers,” he says.
Genuine Paints’ customers –ranging from consumers looking to repair or restore their own cars to fleet managers responsible for numerous company vehicles to collision-repair shops– benefit from the aforementioned inventory that includes a broad selection of coating products, courtesy of Martin Senour.
Diverse selection is important, say company officials, as various customer segments prefer differing coating solutions, and they’ll stick with the products that perform best for them.
“Painters can be somewhat polarized,” Mike Chapman, district sales manager for Martin Senour, recently explained “When they get a product to work, they don’t like change.”
Genuine Paints carries everything Martin Senour offers in vehicle coating technology, according to Meade, as well as the brand’s tapes, abrasives and adhesives. The professional automotive refinishing lineup includes VORTEX®, a waterborne basecoat; Tec/BASE®, a solvent basecoat; and ICP15, a speed clear coat that air dries in 15 minutes as compared to two-and-a-half hour dry times typical of other brands.
Martin Senour offerings don’t end there. Fleet customers tend to prefer its durable PRISM® line, according to Chapman, while its Cross/FIRE® overall refinish system and latest Pro/BASE™ are also popular refinish systems. Several of these product lines are also excellent options for customers applying custom finishes.
The unique configuration and business model of Genuine Paints, coupled with its varied coating selections, certainly have resulted in a successful bottom line as well as a satisfied customer base.