Colorama Paints and Supplies

In 1992 the paint store where Rick worked was shutting its doors, and the sensible move would have been to go find another counter to stand behind. He bought the business instead. He had already been in the paint industry since the eighties, so he knew exactly what he was taking on, and on that foundation he built Colorama Paints and Supplies into a trusted San Diego paint store with deep roots in its community and, today, two stores.

Married in, literally

Zach Herrera did not arrive at Colorama through a job posting. He arrived through a wedding.

"I married into it, literally."

Rick is his father-in-law, and Zach came onboard not long after marrying Rick's daughter. He had never worked in paint retail, though he had a background in construction and woodworking, which is close enough to the trade that the transition felt natural rather than like starting over. He has been with the company for well over a decade now, long enough to have watched from the inside the pride and care his father-in-law put into every part of the business, and long enough to have decided he wanted to be the one carrying that legacy forward.

The trouble with a system that works

Running a family-owned store in the current market comes with its own set of challenges, and the hardest of them to keep pace with is technology, because the industry keeps evolving whether or not the software underneath the counter does. Colorama's old systems worked. That was the problem with them. They were clunky and built for an era that did not expect mobile access, real-time updates, or a crew that needs to get things done away from a desk, and the store knew it needed something better while also being reluctant, the way most businesses are, to tear out the thing that was still checking out customers every day.

In the room before there was much to see

Colorama got in early with Rundoo, back when the team was still sitting down with store owners to learn how a paint counter runs day to day, and Zach used that seat to say what a store like his needed. A year or so later the team came back and walked him through what they had built with it. Colorama decided to give it a shot. Backing a young company takes conviction, and it is a decision Zach is glad they made, because Rundoo has grown right alongside the store ever since.

Off the counter and out on the delivery

The way Colorama runs its store changed completely after the switch. Entering customers and processing orders became faster and more intuitive, and what impressed Zach most was how little of the work stayed tied to one machine, since the same system opens on a tablet, on a phone, and out in the field in the middle of a delivery.

"We're no longer tied to the counter or stuck behind a desktop, and that flexibility has been a game-changer."

The part where somebody picks up the suggestion

The other half of the story is what happens when Colorama runs into a scenario nobody anticipated or has an idea about how something ought to work. Those get taken seriously, and often enough they turn up later inside an update.

"That kind of partnership is rare, and it's one of the things that makes Rundoo feel less like a vendor and more like a true extension of our team."

Three decades on from the leap of faith that started it, Colorama is still a family business, still in San Diego, and still run by people who care what happens at the counter. What has changed is that the software no longer sets the ceiling. Zach is proud of how far the store has come and clear-eyed about where it is going, which is forward, and not only keeping up.