When Koryn Dove explains how Manati Painting treats a customer, she starts in a hair salon.
Her mother has owned salons for 30 years. “As soon as the customer walked through the door it was make them feel like they’re the most valuable person in the world,” Dove says. “Each person got the same feeling.”
Dove runs the painting company on that rule. “That’s how I am with my customer, from the largest job to the smallest job,” she says. “This is the biggest to them. They feel as important as the next person.”
Manati Painting, based in Bridgeport, has been operating since 2014, and Dove is its sole owner. Its crews paint houses and businesses across Montgomery and Bucks counties, and by her count the work splits about 60 percent residential and 40 percent commercial. She says she has no preference between the two.
The rule shows up in how she handles a schedule that falls apart. If a crew is working on an exterior and rain comes that was not in the forecast, she says, the company tells the customer the work is moving to the next day. The point is that customers never have to wonder where their painters are. Dove says she thinks about where the customer is standing. “They’re at a vulnerable state, where they’re actually searching for a trade to come into their home,” she says.
It shapes how she hires, too. She says she looks for people who want to belong to a company rather than simply hold a job, and she has sifted through a lot of people over the years to land the crew she has now. Her painters have been with her a while, she says, and they know what she is looking for. “I can always hire someone and put them on a job and they just do the work,” she says. “I go beyond that. I hire someone who gives that same energy to the customer as I do. I hire someone who makes that person, because they’re in their home, feel very comfortable.”
She says her painters go through actual training. Manati’s own description of the work puts most of the weight on prep. Inside, holes and dents are filled and sanded smooth, primer goes on, then one or two coats of paint. Outside, crews pull and replace rotten wood, caulk and sand, and prime before any color goes on. The company backs its workmanship with a two-year warranty.
One homeowner’s account gives a sense of a larger job. The house was new construction, about 2,100 square feet, with builder-grade flat paint on every interior wall. Dove came out as project manager for the first visit, the homeowner wrote, and two painters finished the walls in five days, cleaning up at the end of each one. They used Sherwin-Williams paint, with a preference for its Emerald line.
Dove has customers she has worked with for 10 years. They keep coming back, she says, “because they don’t want to start a new relationship with another company. We just keep that line open for them.”