Document mnnqB6rJw2pVoV10d386zD5k

hat was that name again? \ tale of two young men tfho redly painted the town By Ronald Hambleton ;imaLS have always been popir in creating corporate images ns on trucks, tigers in gas tanks on Corn Flakes boxes, bulls in. okerage houses, lions on a movie reen.ot as a radiator cap, dogs in :>rn of a phonograph speaker or i the side of a bus, and cats un iting bathroom tissue o t stamped i a rubber heel. But would you entrust your arketing message to a charnel* >n} This anciem lizard is sometimes .lied a dwarf lion because that's e comparison-that struck the an* cm Creeks when; they put a ime to it. It is ugly, inedible, and >es little else but sulk in trees, :casionaliy flicking out a tongue catch insects. But when Sherwin-Williams nt image-shopping in the .`veiarid zoo over a century ago, y took to the chameleon be* - e it came in a wide range of rorator .colors, and color is what ry were selling. And to make re the customer made the con* ection, they mounted the cha* icleon on a painter's palette. That -as their first logo. The message was particularly mportam back in the 1870s, for ienry Alden Sherwin and Edward 'orter Williams were setting out to hange the bulymg habits of the lation. Before SVP; (the chameleon ater gave way to initials) it was the :ustom for stores to sell the ingrelienn--pigment, white lead, and nl-which the buyer would mix ip when he got back to the job. \fter swp came the era of the eady-mixed paint. That's not to say nobody had partnership, but he refused on the Their factory was a small coop ever before sold a can of paint of a. moral ground that the grocery erage shop' beside the Cuyahoga certain color, but it fell to Sherwin store sold liquor, and then quit to River in Cleveland, which, they and Williams to make a habit of it, go into the paint business with a bought from Standard Oil in 1873. when they mixed their special tal friend named Truman Dunham. They installed a boiler, an engine, ents in this new .approach to the Later in life, Sherwin listed his a mixer, a second-hand stone mill, merchandising of paint. capital: Good health, the inheri and a putty chaser; and hired a vet It's strange that these two men tance from poor but honest parr eran Irish paint-maker from New ever joined forces, for they came ents, ambition, a few years' York as foreman. from such widely different back working experience, and $2,000 Six yean later, they opened a grounds. cash in a savings bank. branch plant in Chicago, the first Williams, born in 1842, was the Though Williams had not yet step in a widening distribution sys son of a Cleveland banker, while come into it, that firm; established tem, and were ready to start pro Sherwin, a year older, came from a in 1866 as Truman Dunham it duction of prepared or ready- working-class family in the small Co., is taken as the beginning of mixed paints. Vermont town of Baltimore. One The Sherwin-Williams Company The public didn't trust most source says he moved there with of today. paints in those days. They used to say; "Chalk and water, and lei the public beware." Sherwin finally "The chameleon tarried the Sherwin-Wllllama me*-* sage for more than 25 years until It waa replaced In 1905 by a can marked SWP spilling Its contents over the globe, with the slogan 'Covar The Earth' .. Sherwin characteristically thought the symbol was not quite honest, since the company wasn't doing worldwide business at the time." came up with a mill to grind the pigments fine enough to remain in suspension with the oil, and the first Swp can-"Shade K"-came out in 1880, canying a guarantee "not to crack, flake or chalk off," and to "work better, wear better and permanently look better." The chameleon carried the Sherwin-Williams message for his parents when his father was offered a good job with the U.S. Customs. But a history of Cleve land says he went there on the advice of his uncle Nelson, a Cleveland lawyer, who told i him "the city was a good place to grow up in." In I860, the population of Cleveland was about 90,000. Young:Sherwin, then aged 18, had already been earning his own living since he turned 13. As a clerk in a general store in Springfield, Vt, he slept above the store in an attic so leaky that snow would blow in on him as he lay sleepingon h is cot. New in a strange town, he natu rally turned to clerking, the work he knew, best. In the next six years, he clerked first in a dry-goods store, where he was so good at spottingV`iwildcat" or bogus mon ey, he was made cashier; then be came the bookkeeper in a whole sale grocery. He was offered a Their "little storeroom on Supe rior Street" sold paint supplies and linseed oil, but Sherwin, more thorough than his partner, went into every aspect of the business. He worked in the, shop; {packing, carting, stocktaking, and at night pored over books and catalogues. "Some day," he said, "we're go ing tomanufacture paints/' The partnership ended after three years, Dunham look over linseed oil, while Sherwin looked around for a new partner in paint. It's a mystery how Sherwin and Williams ever met. Though Wil liams had been born in Cleveland, he had been away from home for years. He went to University in Hudson, Ohio, and after gradua tion, enlisted in the infantry for service in the American {civil war. Wounded at Vicksburg, he was invalidated back home,but af ter the1 war he went intolthe glass business in a small town near Akron. Since both glass and paint are building materials, maybe they met over some supply counter; but somehow they got to know each other well enough to enter into a partnership in February, 1870, under the name Sherwin-Williams & Co. They: started out as retailers, with Sherwin the paint expert, and Williams the bora salesman, but the following year they organized a separate manufacturing Compa ny, which by 1873 was producing 450,000 pounds of paint, oil colors, more than 23 years (it was also the name of their house-organ) until it Wbi replaced in 1903 by a can marked swp spilling its contents over the globe with the slogan "Cover The Earth." That symbol, promoted by Wal ter iCotungham;. who took over as president from Sherwin in 1909 (WUUams diedirmnl903)^ was based on a rough sketch by their adver tising manager.. Sherwin characteristically thoughtnkhe i symbol was not quite honest, since the company wasn't doing worldwide business at the time. But Cotungham said, in ef fect: "So what? Put up the sketch and we'Umake'it come true." Growth obviously in the wind, because that same year they acquired!!!* factory to process lead and zmc,|ithe first of a stream of subsidiariespinduding white lead works, varnish makers, paint plants, brush'makers, aerosol pro* cesser*, both :on this continent and abroad. Today, they have net sales of over $1.2 billion from five groups (abetted Coatings,- Packaging Producn, Specialty Products, InterniU'onal Coatings and the 75%-owned Canadian subsidiary. So what do'they do when ihey finally do "cover the earth?" They dropped st as they dropped the chameleon, and changed the cor porate image to the linked names of the two founders. Which is where it all started anyway, a putty and 83 different paint for RONALD HAMBLGTOH is a Ts t c x U mulas., bcitdfntlanctwnler. N11594 0007-SWP-000004672 Bid to go MOR is denied A BID by CKDS-FM, Hamilton, OnL, to twitch: famuli from easy-listen ing to middle-of-the-road (MOR) his been denied by (he Canadian Radio-television end rocal and d2%i were instrument! The maximum level for vocal s lectiona is 50%. A subsequent study in Janua 1985, carried out over one wee rivwwwt rbt< /rvne w*\ trill f