The story
Founded by Edward Williams and Henry Sherwin in 1866, in Cleveland.1
Sherwin-Williams dates from 1866, when Cleveland bookkeeper Henry Sherwin invested in Truman Dunham & Co., a paint distributorship. After the partnership dissolved in 1870, he formed Sherwin, Williams, & Co. with Edward Williams and A.T. Osborn. For its first factory, in 1873 the company acquired a cooperage in Cleveland from Standard Oil.
Sherwin-Williams was incorporated in Ohio on July 16, 1884, two years after Osborn sold his interest in the company while retaining the retail operations. The company grew through acquisitions and expansions in the late 19th and early 20th century. In the early 1920s, the company became the largest coatings manufacturer in the U.S.
In 1875, Sherwin-Williams started selling ready-mixed paint. Previously, consumers bought paint ingredients that they themselves would mix together. In 1930, Sherwin-Williams moved its headquarters to Cleveland's Midland Building, where stayed for over 75 years.
In 1941, Sherwin-Williams introduced Kem-Tone, a water-based fast-drying interior paint and the Sherwin-Williams Roller-KoaterTM paint applicator. In 1996, the American Chemical Society named the product a National Historic Chemical Landmark.
Sherwin-Williams experienced a downturn in the 1970s, and Gulf and Western Industries unsuccessfully attempted to take over. The company recovered by fending off the raid and undergoing a series of acquisitions in the 1980s and 1990s, as well as divesting its non-coatings businesses. In 1995, it employed 18,000 people, including 3,200 in Ohio. By 2002, the company operated more than 2,500 stores.
In 2014, Sherwin-Williams offered to donate $1 million to the Angels Baseball Foundation if a home run ball landed in a giant paint can near the center-field fence of Angel Stadium in Anaheim, California on the fly, though the requirement the ball land on the fly was not noted on the billboard as the billboard simply stated "Angels home run in the can $1,000,000". On September 19, 2017, a home run ball landed in the can after bouncing. Some commentators were upset that a donation wasn't made "due to a lame technicality", causing a public relations embarrassment. In 2016, the first paint registered as microbicidal with the United States Environmental Protection Agency was brought to market by Sherwin-Williams.
In September 2019, the company announced that it would move its headquarters to a larger site, and in February 2020, confirmed it would remain in the Cleveland area. That month, the company also began work on a new R&D center in Brecksville, OH. The Sherwin-Williams Headquarters location was clarified in March 2020, with the company committing to constructing a new building complex, also in Downtown Cleveland. The downtown HQ was originally projected to open in 2023, but a construction pause due to the COVID-19 pandemic delayed the projected opening until 2024. The company invested $600 million (US) in its new facilities, providing working space for 3,500 employees.
In November 2020, the company fired employee Tony Piloseno, who'd amassed over 1.4 million viewers on his TikTok paint mixing channel, Tonesterpaints, for alleged misconduct. The company was criticized for their perceived mishandling of the situation with critics believing the company failed to realize the marketing opportunity they'd just lost. Piloseno received multiple offers of employment from Sherwin-Williams' industry rivals and took up a position with Florida Paints where he will have his own art studio and develop his own custom range of paints. Commentators pointed out the differing reaction the company had after going viral when compared to other companies such as Ocean Spray, who had positively reacted to going viral on the TikTok platform.
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Acquisitions
In 2004, Sherwin-Williams acquired Paint Sundry Brands for $295 million and Duron Inc. for $253 million. In June 2007, Sherwin-Williams announced that it had completed an acquisition of M.A. Bruder & Sons, a manufacturer and distributor of paints and coatings. On July 6 2011, Sherwin-Williams acquired Leighs Paints, based in Bolton UK, manufacturers of intumescent and high performance industrial coatings. In June 2012, Sherwin-Williams acquired Geocel Holdings Corp for an undisclosed amount. In March 2016, Sherwin-Williams acquired the Valspar Corporation for $11.3 billion.
In April 2022, the company announced that it had completed an acquisition of the European industrial coatings business of Sika AG. In June 2022, the company agreed to acquire Gross & Perthun GmbH. This Germany-based distributor primarily manufactures and distributes coatings for the heavy equipment and transportation industries.
From Wikipedia’s article on Sherwin-Williams, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.8