Wal-Mart yanks Lucite; Glidden, Dutch Boy head paint lineup

Wal-Mart Yanks Lucite

Glidden and Dutch boy Kem-Tone brand paints have replaced Lucite on Wal-Mart shelves.

Wal-Mart has put Glidden into 803 of its 1,258 stores, said Earl Wearsch, director of dealer sales. Glidden, Cleveland, began shipping in January to Wal-Mart's in the South and Southeast. In 125 other stores, Wal-Mart carries only its private label paint, made by United Coatings, Memphis, Tenn., he said.

That leaves 331 stores in the Midwest for Dutch Boy Kem-Tone, Sherwin-Williams' discount brand. Cleveland-based Dutch Boy began shipping in January.

Wal-mart declined to comment on the departure of Lucite, which it had carrie dsince its earliest days.

The parting of the ways "was totally our decision," said Rich Anton, marketing manager for Lucite, Bellevue, Wash. We decided not to sell to Wal-Mart because we couldn't agree on how to market the brand.

Anton refused to detail the disagreements with what he termed a "major customer" of Lucite.

Clorox bought the Lucite brand from DuPont about four years ago and placed it in its Olympic paints division.

Wal-Mart still carries Olympic wood stains, Anton said.

Lucite will begin shipping this month to new discount store customers, Anton said, but he declined to name them until the brand actually appears on shelves. Existing discount store accounts include Ames, Caldor, Rose's Stores, Harts, Pamida and Heck's, Anton said.

Glidden, Dutch Boy

Add Other New Accounts

Glidden recently snared another discount account when Twin Valu, the new hyper-market venture of Super Valu, began carrying the brand in its two Cleveland units. Super Valu is the parent of ShopKo, but ShopKo doesn't stock Glidden, said Charles Carpenter, vice president, sales.

Dutch Boy made a breakthrough of another sort when Sears agreed to depart from its long-standing reliance on private label paint and take on the Dutch Boy paint in its new paint and hardware "power format." It will make its debut sometime this summer (see DSN, March 20, page 53).

Sherwin-Williams assigns the Dutch Boy Kem-Tone label to paint distributed in discount stores, said Carver Burket, national sales manager. It is equal in perfomance and quality to the Dutch Boy Dirt Fighter label sold in home centers and hardware stores, he said. Wal-Mart has taken on Dutch Boy Kem-Tone in "about 400 stores," he said.

Both Glidden and Dutch Boy brand managers declined to view Wal-Mart's split in new paint vendors as meaning any kind of a face-off test between them.

But Wal-Mart's decision to sell only private label paints in 125 units suggests that it will be comparing results from Glidden and Dutch Boy with those from a control set to stores.

Wal-Mart has demonstrated that it is willing to let key vendors show their stuff by preparing a "laboratory" store (see DSN, Fe. 6). To open in may, probably in Janeslle, Wis., the laboratory store will let vendors take over the merchandising of their product categories and try to prove they can do a better job of presentation than Wal-Mart does.

In another paint development, another round of price increases looms, industry sources say.

Through the first three quarters of 1988, raw material prices rose 16.1 percent, reported Modern Paint and Coatings, a trade magazine. Wholesale pices rose 5.4 percent. In the final quarter of 1988, raw material prices rose 8 percent more, portending higher wholesale pices this year.

One indusry souce predicted prices will increase again by aound 5.5 percent.

COPYRIGHT 1989 Reproduced with permission of the copyright holder. Further reproduction or distribution is prohibited without permission.
COPYRIGHT 2004 Gale Group