COLORI Eco Paint Boutique
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September 2006: Paint boutique serves up color, coffee too
Maybe it’s the gleaming white beverage bar or the finger paints in the children’s area or the superchic vertical string shades covering a display wall of paint cans. But all visual cues indicate this is no ordinary paint store. Recently opened in Bucktown, Colori is a paint boutique. It’s the brainchild of Michelle Herzog, a former road construction contractor who had a heck of a time finding/picking paint colors for her home and ended up finding her way into the upscale paint business.
“I wanted to make it a more comfortable envionment” and experience, Herzog says of the paint choosing/buying process. And thus, the paint bar where customers can sip coffee or lemonade while their orders are being mixed. And the light box with halogen, incandescent and fluorescent bulbs so customers can really see what a paint color looks like under different lights. And the children’s area complete with DVDs, coloring books and juice boxes to keep the little ones entertained during all this.
Colori carries only one brand of paint , C2 Collections of Color, a premium line collection was developed by The Coatings Alliance, a group of independent paint retailers whose members are located in the U.S. and Canada.C2 offers 496 colors in four finishes (a washable flat, eggshell, satin and semigloss) plus custom colors. Gallons run $27.99 to $57.99 a can. Quarts start at $17.99.
Sample cans ($8 a can, including custom colors) are generously sized at 16 ounces. But perhaps the biggest boon for customers caught in the choosing-stage is the store’s Ultimate Paint Chips. They’re poster-board size — 18-by-24 inch swatches of color ($6 each) made with real paint (not printer’s inks).
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