Dunn-Edwards Paints has been painting the town red – and about every other color you can imagine – for the past century with the Commerce-based company celebrating its 100th anniversary last year.

Through the course of its history, Dunn-Edwards has evolved to meet new environmental standards, incorporated e-commerce and digital marketing into its operations, and grown from one storefront on Figueroa Street to now 174 stores across the Southwest.

Founded by Frank Dunn in 1925, the firm originally operated as Consolidated Wallpaper Corp., first focusing on wallpaper. After a few years, the business began incorporating paint into its product lines before opening its first paint factory in 1937. At this point, Arthur Edwards had joined and the brand Dunn-Edwards was born.

“He was really the driving force for the company,” Dunn-Edwards Chief Executive Montgomery Lewis said of Edwards. “Along with the two generations of Edwards families that followed.”

Lewis joined the company in 2009 as vice president of sales before eventually becoming chief operating officer and most recently, chief executive.

Growth markers

A business that survives the Great Depression, World War II, the Great Recession, the Covid-19 pandemic and everything in between doesn’t just happen passively.

“We have what I call a combination of a very opportunistic strategy and then a very slow deterministic strategy,” Lewis said.

On the “deterministic” side, the company follows a model of having stores be 30 minutes from each other in the areas which they operate. In L.A. where traffic dominates the streets, this can mean a spread of 4 to 5 miles apart, but in parts of Central California, those stores can be 30 to 40 miles apart.

In terms of being “opportunistic,” Lewis pointed to Dunn-Edwards’ recent expansion in Northern California. When Kelly-Moore Paints – which was founded in San Mateo County in 1946 – closed all its stores in 2024, Dunn-Edwards made moves to fill its shoes.

“They were in operation on a Thursday and out of business on a Friday. All those painters had to buy paint,” Lewis said. “And so, within the span of about three months, we added 17 stores and hired about 150 former Kelly-Moore employees.”

Given the name recognition Dunn-Edwards has accumulated throughout California, Lewis said its next targets for expansion are the areas Californians seem to be moving to: Oregon, Idaho, Utah, Texas and Colorado.

On the revenue side of things, the company saw sales hit just shy of $500 million last year. Lewis’ new year’s resolution for Dunn-Edwards is to cross that half a billion mark.

He characterized sales growth as “slow and steady,” increasing by about 2-3% per year. Between 2007 and 2025, sales grew 100%.

‘Paintdemic’

Like all businesses at some point, Dunn-Edwards has faced obstacles. Following the pandemic, “there was a national supply chain crisis that caused some challenges,” Lewis said.

On top of that, severe winter storms in early 2021 led to what Lewis called “the great paintdemic,” when raw materials used in paint production such as petroleum began freezing in refineries.

Attending to these disruptions meant some of Dunn-Edwards’ plans for growth had to be put on the back burner. Nevertheless, Lewis is ready to pick things back up.

“We don’t get to stand still. We have to continue to grow and evolve,” Lewis said. “… We want to expand our geography and continue to innovate and bring new products to market.”

Another more recent concern is how ICE raids are impacting the industry. While Lewis said none of his employees have been directly affected, their customer base has endured “some significant disruptions.” With 90% of Dunn-Edwards’ business coming from contractors, their customers’ ability to do their jobs affects how Dunn-Edwards can do theirs.

“With ICE raids being carried out at Home Depot stores, or even sometimes in our parking lots, it has put a lot of concern into that day-labor market, which creates a shortage for our painters,” Lewis said. “People are concerned about being swept up, regardless of what their actual immigration or citizenship status is.”

For contractors hesitant to shop in person, Lewis said the company is being more flexible with the terms of their delivery services to accommodate.

Manufacturing

With manufacturing being central to Dunn-Edwards’ operations, the onset of higher U.S. tariffs last year raised questions. Lewis was candid in not having previously conducted a deep dive into the firm’s international exposure but was relieved with what he discovered when he did.

Dunn-Edwards manufactures all its paint products locally and sources 98.2% of its raw materials in the U.S. Paint accounts for 75% of the company’s sales with the remainder going toward tools such as paint brushes. Looking at the tools they produce and sell, they found that 94% of materials used were sourced in the U.S.

Thus, tariffs don’t pose much of a threat – something not all businesses can confidently say.

“However, where our vendors buy from does come into play, so we’re still uncovering some of that impact,” Lewis said. “So far, it’s been very minimal …  Overall, our impact on raw materials has been less than 1%, so we feel like we’ve been really lucky.”

As of now, all of Dunn-Edwards’ products are made in one manufacturing facility in Phoenix, Arizona, where they produce between 12 million and 13 million gallons of paint every year. The company opened this facility in 2011, and it became the first LEED Gold-certified paint manufacturing facility in the world.

“Environmentally, we’ve been kind of ahead of the curve for our entire history,” Lewis said. 

As more has become known about chemical exposure over the years, Dunn-Edwards has had to make adjustments. For example, Lewis remembered when there was a push away from oil-based paints due to harmful chemicals. However, once harmful solvents were removed, paints began growing bacteria more easily because those chemicals had made it more difficult for bacteria to survive. So, then they had a new problem to solve.

“It’s this constant battle of building high-performing products,” Lewis said.

Marketing initiatives

Other efforts to evolve with the times have involved embracing the digital world and catering to the growing e-commerce space.

For example, Dunn-Edwards has developed online tools for customers where their site can recommend colors for an accent wall or trim based on someone’s main color selection. Additionally, the company puts together various color guides based on a home’s architectural style, a customer’s design for a room and more. Outlining annual color trends, selecting a “color of the year” every year and maintaining an active color blog with insights from art and color professionals also work to enhance Dunn-Edwards’ online presence.

Even still, the company pays close attention to its physical presence and the in-person client experience.

“For customers looking to beautify their home, it can be an intimidating process to look at a wall of 2,000 colors,” Lewis said. “You can go into our stores and get a professional color adviser who will sit down with you for free and help you through that color selection process.”

The company also looks toward customer demographics to inform marketing. In examining their client base, they found high percentages of Hispanic and Korean customers which led them to make their materials multi-lingual.

Also, in observing the customer base, Lewis recalled hearing echoes of labor shortage challenges from contractors working in both paint and construction several years ago. To try to get involved with mitigating that struggle, the company in 2023 launched the Dunn-Edwards Foundation, a nonprofit aimed at providing professional training. Through this, Dunn-Edwards partnered with Homeboy Industries, a downtown nonprofit which provides services and workforce development opportunities for at-risk youth and those formerly incarcerated or tied to gangs. Together, the organizations taught some of Homeboy’s client base the trade of painting.

As with Dunn-Edwards’ overall business, Lewis said he looks forward to growing the foundation in the years to come.

“If you’re open for 100 years in a business like this, it says something,” Lewis said. “You’re doing something special. For me, what it says is that we have a really special group of people, a high-performing product and exceptional service.”