Color Me Brooklyn

Mercury Paint
Walk into any NYC food establishment and it's clear that New Yorkers truly care about what we consume. The locavore, slow, raw, and artisanal food movements run in parallel, intersect and zigzag through our universe. Magazines like Edible and shows like The Chew celebrate what we eat. Food is in the air. Literally. Roof gardens like the greenhouse on the roof of the new Whole Foods in Gowanus are the craze. The Canarasie Native Americans and Colonial Dutch farmers would be stunned.

Prospective buyers of condos in luxury high rises in, say, Williamsburg are drawn to aesthetics like counter tops, cabinet work, floors and, of course, the views. While attention may be paid to the color of the walls, buyers aren't concerned about paint quality and certainly not where it's produced. The roof garden may be a selling point, but not the paint.




Most locavores consume food grown or produced within a 100 mile radius and tout the benefits of their shrinking carbon footprint and keeping small local farms in business. Developers, contractors and building owners benefit similarly with green, energy efficient buildings. The nationally recognized Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) rating system defines regional building materials as those manufactured within 500 miles. There's no requirement or reward for construction of properties with materials manufactured right in New York City. Ultimately, the driving force is cost - of building and maintaining. The story's the same for renters and buyers in Brooklyn. 


But I produce Made in Brooklyn Tours and after I moved back to Bensonhurst, I decided to color my new home with paint Made in Brooklyn. Color me Brooklyn.

Freddy Tichner
So, I made my way out to Flatlands to meet Freddy at Mercury Paint. Freddy was an executive in the garment district before marrying into Mercury - a family business now in its third generation. Over the course of nearly thirty years he's been instrumental in exponentially increasing sales. Today, Mercury remains competitive by focusing on producing high quality specialty paints for private label brands and, recently, by partnering with PPG (Pittsburgh Paint), a company that dwarfs other well known paint manufacturers.




Freddy gave me a fascinating tour of the factory bustling with activity despite the winter weather. High-lows buzzed about stacks of cans while paint in a variety of colors swirled in several five hundred and thousand gallon vats. When Mercury Paint started in 1947 there were about thirty other manufacturers of paint in New York City alone. Today the industry as a whole is dominated by five enormous players each with revenues well over $1B. In New York City, Mercury acquired the Amsterdam and Sapolin brands and is the last one standing.






At the start of the tour, I was introduced to the equivalent of a wine taster in the paint industry. A "shader" precisely mixes and matches colors. Freddy assured me that computers and other special instruments are no match for their human eyes. Next I met a chemist responsible for R&D and the formulation of entirely new paints for specific projects and private labels. Paint is tested for thickness, dry time and weight/gallon. I felt a little like James Bond visiting Q's lab when the chemist demonstrated a new fire retardant paint he's developing by taking a blowtorch to a piece of cardboard covered with it. Many Mercury employees came in through the Doe Fund - a nonprofit providing career assistance for those with histories of homelessness, incarceration, and substance abuse. Manufacturers tend to have less turnover and this seemed to be true at Mercury Paint. Everyone I met was local and employed there for several years.


Mercury Paint made a significant investment in making their facility EPA compliant, actively recycling and producing no waste. Mercury offers low and zero VOC (Volatile Organic Compound) paints and excels at producing high quality commercial paint rather than several lines of lesser quality like those offered by the much larger players. In fact, Feddy claims that Mercury has been producing high quality paint and primer in one (one coat coverage) well before it came into vogue. While water-based paint is exclusively embraced by larger manufacturers, Mercury is nimble enough to continue to produce oil paints too. 


Mercury does much of its business with municipalities, paint contractors and property managers mandated to use paint that meets higher standards for quality and other specifications. There's more value - meaning less labor - in a can of high quality paint. If the general public were made more aware of our local building materials manufacturers we may be willing to play a more active role in the institution of incentive programs that reward contractors that build with them. Terms like "farm-to-table" for food are part of our lexicon because we're concerned about employment, the environment and what we consume. We needn't be colorblind when it comes to the buildings where we actually live.