Stan Talks: Painting The Way Into Unfamiliar Territory

Stan Talks features interviews with Rosco’s Chairman of The Board Stan Miller as he reflects upon the company’s history and how Rosco Laboratories became the company it is today. In this episode, Mr. Miller discusses why and how the company ventured into the world of scenic paint products.

As Rosco’s business in the entertainment lighting industry grew, Stan and his cousin/business partner Len were searching for other avenues of growth. When Mr. Miller called on the lighting departments inside theaters and opera houses, he began noting the paint tables in the scene shop and the vast quantities of paint every one of these shops consumed. Stan quickly realized that the scenic designer was a ‘cousin’ to the lighting designer, so it seemed like a logical step to develop paint products Rosco could market and sell to that part of the theatrical family.

Mr. Miller also explains how he had to convince the “lighting dealers” he’d been dealing with that there was money to be made selling paint to the very same theaters, opera houses and colleges they were already doing business with. It took some doing, but as Stan notes, he eventually turned many of our "stage lighting" dealers into full theatrical-supply vendors and added to their revenue.

Rosco’s venture into the scenic paint business started in the late-70’s with Supersaturated Roscopaint, which was originally sold as a paint concentrate in pods that would be added to a white or clear base, but is now available as a concentrated paint that you simply let-down with water. By 1980, we had gained a strong foothold in the scenic paint market, which lead to our acquisition of the Iddings Paint Company and our Iddings Deep Colors range of casein paint. Both of those paint lines exist to this day, along with Off Broadway and our VividFX and Fluorescent brands of scenic paint.

Thanks to Mr. Miller’s insight, Rosco and its dealers (who had never sold anything without a cable connected to it before) found that they had customers for paint! Thus began a wonderful, enduring relationship built upon new Rosco products that would inspire the company and its dealers to venture into other businesses together.

Save