Ben Greenberg’s creativity and experimentation have helped him grow his paint store over the years, building its reputation with a paint sample rental program and special-order home fashions.
The store, Debsan The Decorating Store in Natick, Massachusetts, is located about 15 miles southwest of Boston and draws in shoppers from the wealthy communities nearby.
Ben has positioned the store as a high-end destination for custom home aesthetics and he mostly relies on word-of-mouth advertising. He isn’t surprised when new customers come in daily to buy paint or take home color samples.
When new shoppers show up looking for paint, they often discover that Debsan can also provide the carpeting, fabric and window blinds they need for their home projects.
“We get people in the front door with the paint department,” Ben says.
Professional contractors also refer homeowner customers to Debsan because the store staff helps clients think through and select paint colors, saving the contractors time and effort.
“Contractors love our system because it relieves them of the time talking about colors and making up samples,” Ben says.
Customers stay for more than paint when they learn they can special order flooring, wallcoverings and fabric. Debsan designers are available to walk them through the whole store and discuss their home projects.
Once customers have decided on paint colors and any custom orders, the Debsan staff connects them with subcontractors who do work such as upholstering, wallpapering and laying vinyl floors. A window blind and drapery installer works full time on Debsan’s staff, so Debsan can provide installation of window coverings in-house.
A Business Begins
Ben’s parents, Betty and Joe Greenberg, started the original Debsan location in 1947 in the basement of a furniture warehouse in Natick. The store occupied about 1,000 square feet but only stayed small for about 20 years.
In 1967, the owner of a Main Street furniture store was closing his business and offered to sell his facility to the Greenbergs.
“My father had no money. He bought it on a handshake,” Ben says.
The original Debsan basement location was significantly smaller than the furniture store, so when Joe agreed to buy the building, he was acquiring a space that was far too large for his business’s needs.
“All of a sudden, he had to figure out what to do with a store that was four times as big as the original location,” Ben says.
Ben graduated from high school that same year and set to work helping his dad fill up the extra space with new products. He experimented with adding carpeting to the inventory and keeping wallpaper and pre-made draperies in stock.
Joe eventually gave the store to his two sons, but Ben bought out his brother Steve, becoming the store’s sole owner in 1996, nearly 50 years after his parents started the business.
Ben discovered, through years of tweaking his product mix and figuring out how to fill the 4,500-square-foot retail space, that his customers were interested in choosing paint colors in person but did not want to buy wallpaper or pre-made curtains off a shelf. They preferred browsing samples and choosing unique, high-end items to special order.
The store now stocks paint and displays samples of fabric, carpeting, window blinds and wallpaper.
To supplement the store’s income, Ben acquired two nearby buildings and rents them to owners of two complementary businesses, which are a consignment art store and a consignment designer clothing store. Both business owners buy products from Debsan and share some overlapping customers with the paint and decorating store.
Starting With Paint
Since Debsan is primarily known for paint, most customers show up at the store because they have heard about its unusual color sample program.
The store’s rent-a-quart paint sample service is a unique attraction, especially for new customers. Debsan has about 8,000 quart-size paint samples customers can test at home for $4 per jar.
Ben keeps around 3,500 colors in screw-top sample jars in the store’s basement. Racks of the small containers occupy nearly 1,000 square feet of the basement, and a dumbwaiter makes it easy for Debsan staff to retrieve and return samples to the basement.
Customers rent the jars, test the colors and then return the containers, which Debsan can then rent out again. The arrangement is convenient for Debsan and its customers.
“Renting and returning samples means you don’t fill your garage with things you can’t throw away,” Ben says.
In 2020, the store earned $45,000 from paint sample rentals, but the customers who rented samples also spent money on other products, including $500,000 worth of carpet, boosting the store’s bottom line.
The Debsan staff uses conversations about paint colors to start relationships with many customers who are interested in home updates, which could include ordering custom curtains and selecting vinyl flooring for their basements.
The Debsan team includes 10 staff members, three of whom are interior decorators with at least 30 years of experience each.
The decorators are good at helping customers develop full projects, guiding them through choices about paint colors and beyond.
“When you have a decorator and customer who are working together really nicely, it’s easy to go from paint and carpet to upholstery and fabrics,” Ben says.
Debsan loyalists are willing to pay for individualized service and high-end custom products. They are also willing to wait for special orders.
“I have found that when you’re in a high-class neighborhood, customers want what they want, and they’re not going to buy something just because it’s a good price,” Ben says.
