Estimated reading time: 3 minutes

It's Only Common Sense: Care Enough to Buy the Very Best

Editor's Note: To listen to Dan's weekly column, as you've always done in the past, click here. For the written transcript, keep reading...I was watching television the other night when a commercial came on for paint--house paint. I perked up because I need house paint. I have one of those old houses with a cool front porch and every year I paint that porch floor because I want to shine and look like the porch floors in those fancy house magazines. And, it does, for a few months--so shiny and new looking that I can see my face reflected in that newly-painted floor. Then, of course, Maine winters being, well, Maine winters, that paint job gets ruined during the winter to where it’s all dull and cracked and peeling by the following spring. This drives me bananas. I have become fanatical about that porch floor. So, when this commercial came one for paint, I instantly sat up in my recliner, my interest piqued!

The soft, educated man’s voice in the commercial said this was the new "Marquee" paint by Behr. He said it was the best paint they had ever made. He said it would last longer than any other paint on the market. He said it would keep its color and its luster longer than any other premium paint on the market. And he said I could only get it at my local Home Depot.

Man, I wanted that paint! If it wasn’t so late that Home Depot was closed I would have run right over there as quickly as my Jeep would take me and I would have bought a gallon of that paint. I knew it would cost more because the narrator had called it “premium paint” and everyone knows that the word premium is code for “it costs more than other paints.” But I didn’t care about that. I mean, I only need a gallon--or less than a gallon, actually--to give my porch floor two coats of paint.

I planned to go out the next day and buy a gallon of that Behr Marquee premium paint no matter what it cost. Now, a gallon of good paint will run you about $30, maybe a little more. I didn’t care. I wanted that paint!

When I go out later today to buy that gallon of Behr Marquee premium house paint I’m bringing my check book and I am going to pay whatever they say that can of paint costs. If they tell me it costs fifty $50 or even $100, I’m buying it because that guy told me that this is the best paint on the market. And, yes, by using the word "premium" he told me that I was going to pay more for it. I’m going to pay, well, a premium!

I’ve learned that when it comes to house paint, like a lot of other things in life, it’s not the price of the paint that matters, but the quality of the paint. Maybe this paint will be so good that it will last a couple of years. Or, maybe it will last three or even four years before I have to repaint that porch floor and how much is that worth? A lot, at least to me.

My hopes are that this paint will make my front porch look just like the porches on fancy Hampton homes you see in Architectural Digest! If that happens, how much is that worth? A heck of a lot more than $100, I can tell you that! This, to me, is simply the price of quality, the price you pay when you care enough to buy the very best to paraphrase my friends in Kansas City.

Why doesn’t this apply in our industry? Why don’t we care as much about the quality of the PCBs as we do their price? Why don’t our customers get goose bumps when they think about buying the very best PCBs that money can buy? Instead, they travel the world looking for the cheapest product they can get their hands on. If these same people were painting their front porch floor, they would be at their local discount warehouse buying that thin paint that comes in five gallon buckets for $20 a bucket, buy a six pack on the way home with the money they saved, and call it a day. Think about that: Why don’t we all care enough to buy the very best? It’s only common sense.