OUR STORY begins with my dad and his brothers. They were big painters down in Southern California before they moved to Southwestern Oregon for a change of scenery. As soon as they got settled, they restarted their painting business, now in the forests of Oregon.
For one of their first jobs, the homeowner wanted Benjamin Moore paint. But as my dad called around, he learned there wasn’t a single store in the valley that sold it! Dedicated to his customer, he hopped in his truck and drove four hours to Portland.
Then another customer asked for Benjamin Moore. And another. And another. My dad and uncles quickly decided two things: they did not love that drive, and someone should open a Benjamin Moore store down here in Medford.
And thus, Drake’s Paint & Supply was born! They thought they would be the only customers, but it quickly caught on with homeowners and contractors in the area. By 2005, my dad and his cousin John saw how well the store was doing and decided to focus full time on it. I grew up in and around the business since I was young, and now paint is in my blood!
Technology has been at the core of our business since then. Investing in technology has allowed us to offer fast, accurate service. I have found that if a contractor knows they can rely on us day in and day out to get what they need, we will win their loyalty.
I first built our core technology independently. I worked with a team in India to build a custom system for work order management. We could take orders via phone or online, input the product and color, and then track its status. My next project was integrating it with our point-of-sale.
I reached out to our point-of-sale provider about these integrations. There seemed to be some interesting options, but unfortunately the company was acquired by a large conglomerate. As soon as that happened, all communication totally stopped.
We started looking into other systems with the goal of finding a partner that was growing and adding new features.
During this search, I met Joe from Rundoo. He’s the guy on the right with the hat. Joe and the team knew the ins and outs of computers that I don’t know. And they were eager to learn the ins and outs of paint that I do know. It was exciting to be on the ground floor!
I had found what I was looking for.
The switch to Rundoo was super smooth.
Nick (in the black shirt) and Joe came out here to help us with it. it took about 2 days. Rundoo is pretty self-explanatory: there wasn’t a lot of training needed. There are always some growing pains, so their customer service response time is nearly instantaneous. I know I’m in good hands.
My favorite thing about Rundoo is its speed. It loads so fast, nearly instantaneously. I can search at the stroke of a button and find anything. My checkouts are faster. The lag time of our old system was considerable, and I didn’t realize just how much it was slowing us down until I used Rundoo. And during the contractor rush, I know speed is what drives loyalty.
I would highly recommend that folks looking to switch to Rundoo start looking soon. When we joined it was still in progress but now Rundoo is really state of the art. If you look at the functionalities they offer and the team they have, you see they are building a system like nothing else in this industry. Rundoo is the future.
