Fernando Lopez’s father was a painter for 10 or 15 years. He was working in the Daybreak area of South Jordan when he saw an opening. Lopez says his father “noticed that there was a lot of work for paint and just construction in general.”
Lopez was doing online business at the time, “Shopify stuff,” as he puts it. “I was kind of into the business stuff,” he says, so he and his father went into partnership. They started FS Painting in 2019, and his father is still his partner.
Builders kept the young company busy. Homeowners are the customers Lopez wants.
During COVID, the company was painting for a home builder. Interest rates were around 2.5 to 3 percent, Lopez says, and the builder’s houses were selling. “They just had a bunch of homes going for sale and then we were painting for them, so we were super busy during COVID,” he says. He calls it the company’s busiest stretch.
New construction never went away. The company has done a lot of work with home builders in the years since, and it still takes production painting for new builds and for townhome and multifamily communities, along with commercial jobs.
Lopez doesn’t hedge about which side he prefers. “We really like the residential stuff way better,” he says. He means interior and exterior painting on people’s houses, and that is the work he would like the company to be known for.
Showing up when promised is the part he talks about most plainly. “If we tell a customer a time, we want to be there when we say. Just keep that honesty and that trust with them,” he says. He credits that partly to how he grew up and partly to what he has seen in business. Let it slide, he says, and “it shows in your business.” It comes back around, down to the employees.
The crews are W-2 employees plus some subcontractors. Lopez says he leads by example, and the rest is “just keeping the crews happy.”
One homeowner who hired the company to patch and repaint a well-worn house noted afterward that the painters arrived at 8 every morning, stayed until 5 or 6, and brought their own lunches and microwaves so they could keep working on site. The job had been estimated at five to seven days. It took five.
What wins the residential jobs, Lopez says, mostly happens before anyone opens a can. Customers have told him they noticed he was honest with them, that he actually measured the house before giving a bid, that he was friendly and presentable when he came out. “I feel like just presentation is a lot when you’re going to a homeowner’s house,” he says.