At Age 50, She Started a Business From Her Kitchen Table. Now Her Everyday Household Product Makes $31 Million a Year.

 

Paula Blankenship inherited her mother’s eye for DIY furniture.

Paula Blankenship, the 63-year-old founder of Heirloom Traditions Paint and author of the forthcoming memoir Just Open the Jar: A DIY Path to Creating a Life You Love, comes from a family of entrepreneurs.

She grew up in Oneida, Tennessee, watching her parents run a retail business. Blankenship was interested in doing the same. She didn’t graduate from high school; at 16, her mother helped her open her first shop selling clothes. After that, she and her sister opened a retail store selling floor covering, paint and other items

for home decoration. 

“ I never want to look down on that because it was where I really learned to hone my selling skills, design skills and all that,” Blankenship tells Entrepreneur. After a chance meeting with a young billionaire who appreciated her eye for interior design, she applied her expertise to properties in New York and Connecticut. 

But when her parents passed away, Blankenship, a single mother then, cut down on her travel to be with her teenage son. He earned a place at a private school in Louisville, Kentucky, and when they made the move — one her son wasn’t all that thrilled about — Blankenship began to brainstorm ways to fill some of their evenings.

Starting a paint business with help from Facebook

With her background in furniture and interior design, starting a paint business seemed like a strong fit. “I  thought, You know, maybe that is something I could do,” Blankenship recalls. “I’m going to paint some of this ornate, heavy furniture that I’ve dragged up here to this home.”

Blankenship’s mother had loved to go to auctions, purchase furniture and revamp it. “ I hated painted furniture,” Blankenship says. “I would say, ‘Mom, take the new stuff home. Why do you paint this junk?’ And she said, ‘Because I enjoy it.’ Well, here I am, how many years later, being her.” 

Blankenship posted a picture of a dining table she’d painted on Facebook, not understanding the complexities or reach of social media at the time. 

Then, the comments flooded in from people across the country. She’d thought everyone knew how to paint furniture, but they all wanted to learn how she’d done it. It was 2013, and the beginning of Heirloom Traditions Paint. 

Blankenship continued to share photos of her furniture projects on Facebook, and people continued to ask questions about them. The interest motivated her to take the leap. Blankenship started a paint business, figuring she would tap into the community on Facebook and use the platform “like QVC.” 

Returning to an older supplier and a fortuitous phone call

The floor covering store she’d run with her sister had sold paint, so Blankenship reached out to her old supplier in Louisville. Unfortunately, it seemed like a dead end: The business had been sold to another company and no longer existed in Louisville. But Blankenship didn’t give up. 

She called that company, and says the grace of the woman on the other end of the line changed her life. She told Blankenship the company no longer made paint, so she was about to wrap up the call when the woman told her a small faction of the company still existed in Louisville and suggested Blankenship get in touch with them. 

The woman gave Blankenship the number for Lanning Chemical and said she should tell them she needed toll made paint. So Blankenship did. The man who answered, Aaron Lanning, asked her what kind of paint she needed. She asked him if he’d ever heard of chalk paint. He hadn’t — but he was willing to make it. 

A business meeting helps bring Heirloom Traditions to life

Aaron invited Blankenship to come to the shop and meet the team. “I remember this so well,” Blankenship says. “I had a white BMW at the time, and I put on a beautiful suit, thinking this is a business, I’m going to this stainless steel factory paint place that’s going to look like a milk factory, clean. It was the total opposite of that.”

Aaron’s father, the chemist Nick Lanning, came out of the back and sniffed the paint sample she’d brought. He’d never heard of chalk paint either, but after his quick assessment, he determined what Blankenship needed and said they’d be happy to manufacture it. 

One week later, Aaron called to tell her the paint was ready to be tinted — all 100 gallons of it. Blankenship had already put 50 bright, saturated colors online; now, she’d have to make those a reality. “So now I’m thinking, I’ve got to go buy this paint and tint it in these circus colors that I’d made up on Facebook,” she recalls. 

An early order for $1,200 sets the stage for growth

An early order for $1,200 worth of paint from a friend helped motivate Blankenship to see the process through. Then, she listed the product on eBay. Her initial goal was to sell $100 worth of paint a day. Just about a month in, she was hitting $200 a day.

As the orders rolled in, so did the reviews. At first, Blankenship was too scared to read them. She knew she was selling a good product, but she wasn’t sure how it might compare to other paints on the market. Fortunately, once she started reading those reviews, the consensus was clear. People were responding well; the business kept growing. 

Soon, the operation became too big to run from Blankenship’s kitchen table. Her now-husband encouraged her to find a larger space for the business.  “‘You’re going to blow this house up,’” she remembers him saying. “‘It smells like a meth lab in here.’ Because I was making wax to go over the paint. I was making that on the stove, and it did have an aroma.”

Transitioning the business out of the kitchen to a flex space

Blankeship found an office and warehouse space and hired her first employee to help her label and ship the paint. At that point, with the help of social media, the business continued to gain significant traction. Then, when Blankenship’s husband lost his job in insurance, she suggested he join her and go all-in on the business. 

They weren’t yet married, but he said, “ I’ve got $100,000 in severance package, and I’ve got three months of pay. That’s all I’ve got.” Blankenship had a piece of land she could sell for $80,000, along with a house, to help fund the venture. 

“We basically pushed our chips in the middle and said, ‘One more round,’” Blankenship says. 

Credit: entrepreneur