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Massive Paint Shortages at House of Kolor

For many of us painting cars and motorcycles is not an occupation its a hobby. We are not looking to paint a fender on a 2002 Buick we are looking to do a custom paint job, something special something out of the ordinary. And to be fair this is a very small slice of the automotive paint business. And the automotive paint business is a very small slice of the coatings business that said it is a very important slice of the business, and for many of us the most fun slice.
The Big name in the custom paint business is House of Kolor a division of  The Valspar Corporation.Valspar is not a small company it has more than 9,000 employees with a market cap of more than 4Billion US$, not a BASF or DuPont to be sure but Big Industry. A former Valspar employee told me this week that House of Kolor is one of the highest margin divisions of the company.
As a paint retailer we sell the most custom paint right at this time of year. Springtime we want to fix up the Harley for the open road or do that custom paint job on the 56 Chevy.
In a letter to House of Kolor customers from Nick Dahl, House of Kolor General Manager, addresses the Stock Shortages. He blames the inventory shortfalls on supply chain shortfalls and inventory shortfalls from his suppliers.
Looking at the HOK master stock list there are 150 items that are "temporarily out of stock" the list includes primers and sealers, the new DTM colored surfacers and sealers, all of the solid base coats, most of the  Glamour Basecoats (BC) most of the Fine Basecoats (FBC), most of the Kandy Basecoats  (KBC), many of the Urethane Kandys (UK) and the Kandy Koncentrates (KK). There are also m ajor shortages in the Graphic Kolors (SG) and the Designer Pearls (PBC) also the Kosmic Krome (MC), and the Marbizers.
To be fair they say they will have most of these problems cleared up by late May.
They also are discontinuing many products almost the whole Metajuls line (MBC) I never even got to try that line. They are discontinuing the airbrush size items and about 50 other items.
Is there any one out there to come in and pick up the slack? This could be the best time for a new Custom Paint Company to come forward.      

 
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