Why I Hate WalMart

Sean talks about how the models of franchising, corporate greed and materialism are incompatible with a dude who just wants to paint signs and live his life.

Transcription:

Coming to you from Starr Studios in Denison, Texas, this is Coffee with a Signpainter, a weekly podcast hosted by sign painter, Sean Starr, that consists of interviews with other sign painters and some of the customers and characters Sean comes across while running his studio. Welcome back to Coffee with a Signpainter. We are on the cusp of spring and, the winter weather looks like it's finally starting to take its leave and that's amazingly wonderful because I hate the winner. I thought today I would talk about something that reared its ugly head last week. And it seems to be keep popping up recently for me.

And I know it's a question I've been asked about before by some of the the newer folks getting in because I've been pretty vocal over the years about, corporations and franchises and all that good stuff. But what I wanted to talk about, okay. Here's here's what happened. So, this was several months back when we got to this town, Denison. And, as I'm pulling in, I mean, we hadn't been here a week.

And I'm in the shop truck, which it's obvious what we do because it's plastered all over the truck. And, this truck follows me right into the parking space, and parks right behind me. And, you know, me like a dopey golden retriever, I'm like, Hey, how's it going? And the guy gets out of the truck and he starts essentially interrogating me, about who I am and are you moving your business here. And it quickly became apparent that he was a local sign shop guy.

So, you know, I'm trying to make things, you know, pretty peaceful. So, I said, hey, come on in. Come come check out the studio. And, you know, he comes in and the the thing he does is he's looking all over the room. I'm sure to see if we have a digital printer or something that's going to, affect his business.

I'm not sure. And and just kept hitting me with questions about, Oh, so you only do paint? Okay. So you're just a sign painter. You know, so obviously I am no longer posing a threat to him or his livelihood, which is all good.

You know, I I I get that there are people out there, that are are threatened by any change or anything new coming, and and that's all good. But it it it really started something that has led into multiple other events and conversations. The next one being, having a conversation, with a friend a while a few weeks ago who we were joking around, talking about not not even joking around. It's always been a semi fantasy of my wife and I to have a little coffee shop. We'll probably never do it because neither of us wants to commit to everything that that would entail.

But, you know, when when I met my wife, she was a barista at a coffee shop out in California, and that's actually where we met was in that coffee shop. So we've always talked about it. And, in the conversation, this friend chimes in about, you know, oh, well, you know, you could open a coffee shop and then you could franchise it. You could have multiple locations and you could just drive around managing the locations. And I immediately went on one of my, one of my, fits about franchises and corporations and, you know, up until moving to this locale, which has very limited resources, I hadn't stepped inside a Walmart for over ten years and I was quite proud of that.

So now that we're in a location where out of desperation, you occasionally need to, I feel a little bit like I'm compromising, but what you gonna do? So, anyways, so what happened last week is I get this phone call from a guy and he's down in Dallas, and Dallas has millions of people. And he's upset because my website is pulling up in his market, which for three and a half years since we relocated out to Texas, I've been being found in, Dallas, Fort Worth, other areas for what I do because we've written that into the SEO of the website and, you know, so we go out and we get our little jobs here and there and and we call it good. But, he calls me and he's he's genuinely upset and agitated that I am being found in his town, for what I do. And and he he has his own sign business of some kind and does vinyl and other things as well.

But it just it it really it really agitated me. And I've been trying to sort that out for days now. And I think I think what I I've I've narrowed it down to is I am not a businessman. I I do certain functions of, of a business owner for the sole purpose of surviving to the next month so I can continue to make art and not have to have a job. So, when I when I come across this mentality, that I see with with business owners, and it's almost always the the franchise sign shop owners, the vinyl guys that go out and buy these franchises.

It's like they have this sense of ownership that I bought this town, all of the customers, the potential jobs, everything in this town is mine, and anyone who comes to this town and tries to take that, you know, I'm going to challenge them. I just don't get it. You know, I mean, our business is microscopically small. It's basically me. My wife works with me on occasion on actual on-site jobs, but she takes care of paperwork and bookkeeping and things that I'm too retarded to do.

And, we have an occasional person like Cole that will pull on to a job because, I don't feel like dragging around ladders, you know, all by myself and he's a great help and has been for several years. But that's it. And we're not looking to build a business. We're just looking to, you know, do what we do and enjoy it and get by to the next month and live our lives. But this this sense of ownership, has always puzzled me and I think part of it is because I'm not a businessman.

I'm not somebody who, you know, sits there and projects over the next twelve to twenty four months, you know, how much revenue and all of these things. And, you know what? Maybe maybe I should be. Maybe I should be that person who's planning and building, but No, I don't think so. It's not.

That's not who I am. I want to create. I want to create art and I wanna interact with people and I wanna have relationships and I wanna have a sense of community. That's why I do this. And, you know, when when I repeatedly deal with that personality that's talking about, you know, this is my town and, you know, why why are you being found in my town for this type of work?

You know, why why are you doing that? Like, like I'm sitting there, you know, Doctor. Evil style planning out, okay, I'm gonna go down and get my market share. And it's just crazy to me. But, at any rate, I just, I kinda wanted to get that off my chest and also kinda sort it out.

And, you know, I'm curious how many of you have dealt with that. I've dealt with it a lot over the years. And it seemed like back in the nineties, you know, when there was that real precarious, era whether vinyl and digital was gonna just completely squash sign painting out. It seemed like that was everywhere. You know, people were literally buying up what, you know, these territories and okay I've got, you know, this town over to Main Street and you've got this part of town over to here and, you know, all of these, this posturing of this is mine and I've bought this.

And, what's ironic to me is that there were a percentage of those guys. You know, I'd mentioned this in the movie Sign Painters about how they they were just looking at I can make this much money out of this many square feet of vinyl. But, there were also, a percentage of those franchise shops that were picked up by independent sign guys that were originally sign painters. That, you know, they saw things changing and they said, Well, we're just gonna have to roll with this. And, you know, some some quick sign type place would come in and and, and build out something in a strip center and they figured, well, I join or die.

So, I'm gonna just go ahead and buy that local franchise and erase my company name and my identity that I've had here for ten, fifteen, twenty years and I'm gonna just go ahead and play their game. Which is, I think, you know, really interesting to me when I look at the people that have stuck with sign painting through all of that, the resilience, to just stubbornly say, No, I'm not going to do it. And, you know, I haven't kept this a secret. Out of survival, there was a period of time, that I worked in a vinyl shop and a digital shop because there was absolutely no other options. And, you know, you got bills to pay and a family to feed and, you know, you do what you gotta do.

But when I was in a stage of life where it was, you know, okay, I'm gonna kinda just do this on my own terms. There was absolutely no way. But, so that's, that's something that's been going on in my life recently. It's just trying to, I guess, deal with that again. I think part of it's just moving to this small town.

You know, small towns have quirks. You know, when we moved to Denton, from California, there was a guy there who'd been there forever. His name's Warren Lunt. Awesome sign painter and awesome guy. We actually, really hit it off.

But I was so nervous when we got there because I'm looking around the town and I'm seeing stuff that, you know, had obviously been done by a skilled sign painter, not just somebody painting things. And, you know, I just kept thinking, Oh, man. I I don't wanna be stepping on this guy's toes. I don't want him to feel like I'm, you know, taking stuff that he's, you know, built up over time. And we kept getting more and more work in Denton.

You know, and we've talked openly about it. You know, he and I. And, you know, it's really cool because he feels about it the same way about it that I do. You know, there's plenty of work out there. I've got my customers.

You've got your customers. You know, we've we've worked on a few projects together. We enjoy each other's company. You know, what's the harm? And I really think that's the way it should be.

But I also think that's the difference between, You know the outlook of a person who's just trying to survive as an artist versus A business person, you know who's looking at building and conquering and profit margins and all of this stuff. I mean, like I said, maybe I could use a little bit more of that. Maybe I would be in a better position in my life at this age and and all of that, but, but I don't think so. I think that just takes something that's kind of beautiful and kind of, kind of pure in a way, which I think sign painting is. It's, you know, you're expressing art when you make a sign.

And I know the whole, you know, it's only a sign and all that mentality, and there is some truth to that. But there there's not a sign painter out there that even secretly doesn't drive by some place that he painted the sign and if he did a really creative, beautiful job and, and knows it's art. Especially when you see people interact with it and you see people stopping and taking pictures and pointing up to what you painted and that kind of thing. Yeah, it's art. But that's, you know, that's where we're at, you know, this culture that we've all grown up around.

You know, the last fifty years of the world's culture has just gotten more and more and more material centric and, you know, the it's ironic to me in a way that, everything has been so corporatized. And, you know, you see these big corporations now trying to embrace things looking hand rendered and handcrafted. And, it's like you guys are the jerks that almost squashed it out, you know, because it's all of this, process and refinement and distillment that takes the flavor out of everything. This is another discussion I was having with somebody. You know, that's why I can't stand, that mentality of corporation and franchising and all of this kind of thing is it's this distilling of whatever.

You know, somebody came up with something good. What, you know, okay. I came up with this delicious sandwich, let's say, and it succeeded and my shop got full every lunchtime and people lined up outside because I made a really great sandwich. And the minute somebody tries to turn that into, a franchise or a corporation or or whatever so that they can capitalize on it, it that's it starts the the steady decline because everyone who gets on board, who's looking at increasing the profits, starts extracting anything in that sandwich that, made it what it was in the place in exchange for a slight bump in profit until you end up with a McDonald's cheeseburger, which doesn't look like a cheeseburger, and you can sit on the shelf for a year and it doesn't change. And what's amazing to me is how many people that are in that realm, that corporate realm don't get it.

You know, they're so pumped up and they're so on that train that they just don't get what they're doing. They're destroying themselves as they go. And I've watched this happen over and over. You know, after the big explosion that is Starbucks, you know, all of these companies jumped on board. We're gonna be another Starbucks.

And Starbucks themselves, you go into Starbucks now, it is nothing like Starbucks was five, six, ten years ago. And it's because they're slowly squeezing every penny they can. That that is the nature of a corporation. That is why that is why Walmart and and companies like Walmart are despised. They you know, the thing that I've always had a challenge with with Walmart is Walmart's entire business model has been to come to a small community and wipe out absolutely everybody there that's competing with them.

So, if you are the guy with the little hardware store or you're the person with the little nursery, selling plants, whatever it is, they're going to starve you out because they can, you know, sell stuff at such a ridiculously discounted rate through slave labor in other parts of the world. And they're going to starve you out to the point that you've got no choice but to, you know, hang it up and, you know, most of those guys probably end up going and working, you know, for part time hours with no benefits to run those same departments for Walmart. I I find that horribly upsetting that that's not only a business model, but that we've all participated. We all have. You know, every time you're going in there and buying something, or And it's not just Walmart.

It's just the whole system. It destroys itself as it goes. And then everyone's shocked ten years down the road when things aren't good for you and, you know, I can't believe there's pink slime in a McDonald's whatever. How can you not believe that? So, anyways, I just kind of wanted to, I guess, vent a little.

And, I don't know if anybody out there sees it that way. I know I see it that way. And, it's my show, so I get to talk about it. But, I guess, I guess the the reminder for all of us that are pursuing this and pursuing Art and A lifestyle that is, not material based and Is community based is, stick to your guns. There's always going to be someone coming and dangling a carrot and, it doesn't take a rocket scientist, you know, to figure out that the, all of the people that have been on board with those things have painted themselves in a corner.

The system's broken. It's limping along. And, you know, the the things with heart are the things that that that have staying power. It's always been that way. It's been that way through, You know, history and regimes and, It always will be that way.

So, There you go. I kind of wanted to break up the interviews and, Cover a few of these other subjects once in a while, so This is a good timing for this week, I guess. And I wanted to again. Thank everybody for listening to the show. It's continually growing.

We're, I believe, in 47 countries now. And, if you like the show, drop us a review on iTunes. We also got some swag on, our shop store that some cool stuff for sign painters. Check that out if you want. And, We will be back next week with another interview.

And, enjoy the onset of spring. Today's episode of Coffee with a SoundPainter is brought to you by Full City Rooster Coffee Roasters in Dallas, Texas. Roasting distinctive coffees from around the world. Sean drinks Full City Rooster Coffee every day in the studio. You can order their coffee online at fullcityrooster.com.

Thanks for listening to Coffee with a Signpainter, hosted by Sean Starr. You can find all sorts of info about the show and sign painting, including previous episodes at our website, seanstarr.com.