![]() The company was the first to offer recycled-reclaimed paints and 0-VOC waterborne colorants. (There are over 100 stores in California alone.) Kelly-Moore’s California location not only inspires many of their colors but has also influenced their commitment to the environment. The employee-owned company now has a second facility in Hurst, Texas, and is sold at dealers and in over 150 Kelly-Moore stores in the Midwest and the Western United States. Moore and began as a manufacturing facility and store in San Carlos, California. The brand was founded in 1946 by William H. ![]() To make the process a little easier, we polled Kelly-Moore Paints on what shades their customers choose time and time again. But with so many colors and shades out there, choosing the perfect hue can often be overwhelming. "May each (student) find the foundation for a successful life, a positive balance of mind, body and spirit," he said in a 1993 speech to Georgia Tech students.Nothing can turn a new apartment or house into a home faster than painting the walls. Moore wanted to see the college help new students succeed as it had once helped him. He also established an endowed scholarship for the tennis program he once was part of. The university's Atlanta campus is home to the Bill Moore Tennis Center and the Bill Moore Student Success Center. He remained tightly linked to Georgia Tech, which helped him rise from his poor Southern roots. An avid fly fisherman, he was also a generous donor to a number of charities. Moore retired as Kelly-Moore president in 1984 but remained chairman of the board until his death. "He ran his company like that and expected his people to be the same way." ![]() "His honesty and his ethics are what I remember most about him," said Giffins, Kelly-Moore's president. "Companies go broke because they couldn't sell paint." "I've never heard of a company going broke because they couldn't make paint," he said in an interview. But he saw himself more as a salesman than a technician. Moore's experience in the laboratory helped keep him on top of changes in the industry, and he was willing to spend what was needed to keep his plants state-of-the-art. The company's oversize, 8,000-square-foot stores - nearly three times as large as the industry average - served as free warehouse space for painting contractors who often worked out of their garages. Much of his business was aimed at the painting pros, who knew exactly what they wanted and needed to get it immediately. Moore's reputation for fair dealing and quality products helped his company grow to 2,300 employees, four manufacturing plants and more than 150 stores in eight Western states. "This went on for quite some time."īut Mr. "At night, we went out together, drove around and would actually collect the money from each of the contractors for the products delivered," he said in the Coating World interview. Moore recalled, with his wife, Desiree, keeping the company books. It was a mom-and-pop business in those first years, Mr. He bought Kelly out in 1952 but never changed the company name. Then 28, he persuaded 68-year-old William Kelly, his old boss at Glidden, to come out of retirement and help him set up the business. Moore moved to San Carlos, confident there was a place for "a paint store for painters." His company would work directly with the busy - and notoriously finicky - contractors who were turning the fields and orchards of the Peninsula and the Santa Clara Valley into vast tracts of homes for a growing population. After serving as a naval officer on a destroyer in the Pacific during World War II, he returned home, determined to start his own business. He went to work for the giant Glidden paint company, working both in the laboratory and as a salesman. But a victory in the state doubles championship brought him a tennis scholarship to the Georgia Institute of Technology, where he graduated in 1938 with a degree in industrial management and chemical engineering. Moore, who also owned a Monterey insurance company and the 134,000-acre Broken O Ranch in Montana, prided himself as a businessman, it was his athletic ability that gave him his start.īorn in Oklahoma, he grew up in Arkansas during the Depression and struggled to help his family make ends meet. "I believe in hiring good employees, with clear expectations, at fair wages - and demanding results," he said in a 2002 interview with Coating World magazine, an industry journal.Īlthough Mr. Moore saw the people he brought into his company as the key to his business success.
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