..... didn ‘t happen over night. Leading canal boat painter Phil Speight
trained as a coach-painter in the mid 1960‘s and is still in the business
now - over 30 years later. Some years ago he concluded that the paint he
had been using for quite sometime was no longer performing satisfactorily,
and this was compounded by a decline in the service offered by it‘s
manufacturer. Consequently he and his colleague John Sanderson began to
test all the obvious alternatives but for various reasons they found
nothing that would provide a long term alternative. There was some good
news though. They met, in HMG Paints of Manchester, a manufacturer who was
keen to help.
Since then the boat painter and the paint maker have worked together to
produce a range of products that cover all the particular needs of the
canal and vintage transport markets. Coach enamels, coloured undercoats, decorative paint and
primers all aimed at our specific markets and they are being used, and highly
praised, by an ever increasing number of painters both amateur and
professional.
At the same time Craftmaster
have tried to address the service requirements of all our customers. We have
for example an even-handed price structure that gives no-one an unfair
trading advantage. We will supply any customer with small quantities, to
the extent that anyone can buy special “one-off” colours in single litres,
and our standard coach enamels (26 colours) are available in quarter litre
tins. Service to our customers is at the heart of our business - that’s
why Phil, one of the leading practitioners on the canal system, deals with
all technical queries and requests for advice himself whenever possible.
Craftmaster's
office
is run by Zita Speight. Zita is our Sales Director, she and the
irrepressible Sarah handle all our sales and deal directly with all our customers. We really are a
family business and so is HMG. We work together well. In 2007 we were
joined by
decorative painter/signwriter Meg Harvey, a graduate in
traditional finishes who is working as a trainee with Phil and who is an
outstanding painter in her own right.
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