Gray & Company | The First Call and the Final Touch

By KIM GRONNIGER | Photos by JOHN BURNS

When Phil Gray, owner of Gray & Company, graduated from Washburn University with an art degree in the early 1970s, he thought he’d spend his career painting canvases. Instead, his brother Paul enlisted him to help paint houses for a friend.

What the Gray brothers lacked in experience they made up for with their sharp attention to detail and eagerness to learn. As their expertise grew and word spread, more friends hired them to paint houses and apartment complexes across Topeka.

In 1973, the brothers decided they wanted the security of a steady income and founded the company Gray Skies, which later became the full-service commercial and industrial painting business Gray & Company.

According to Walker Gray, current president of Gray & Company, the way his father Phil Gray and uncle Paul Gray nurtured their early business relationships created a company tradition of quality and customer service that has lasted 52 years.

“Relationships are the bedrock of everything we do,” Walker said. “For example, Bruce and Mike McPherson, the former owners of McPherson Construction, were among my dad and uncle’s first painting clients. McPherson Construction is now the MCP Group and they continue to work with us. Someone once told me that you can start a business quickly, but building a reputation takes a long time. Our founders understood the importance of cultivating trusting relationships from the beginning.”

Walker said about 95% of the company’s business comes from repeat customers seeking painting expertise for everything from painting small corporate offices to large, multi-million-dollar complexes. They oversee projects across the state, including Dodge City, Liberal, Wichita, Salina, Junction City and Manhattan.

The company’s business is 60% commercial and 40% industrial, Walker said, and their project timelines range anywhere from a few hours to a couple of years. Among their most visible and noteworthy projects are a water treatment plant in Wichita, the Irwin Army Hospital at Fort Riley, the Immaculata Church in St. Marys, the Townsite Tower in Topeka, the Bill Snyder Family Stadium at Kansas State University and the David Booth Memorial Stadium at the University of Kansas.

“It’s really gratifying to spend several weeks on a bid, then get the job and take it from start to finish with the general contractors, architects, engineers and other trades,” Walker said.

Just like his father, Walker changed his original career plans to embrace business ownership. He graduated from the University of Kansas with a graduate degree in information technology, then worked for Cerner Corporation before joining Gray & Company in 2004.

“I loved riding along on painting jobs and interacting with our employees when I was in high school and college,” said Walker, who admits he wasn’t interested in construction until he realized the grind of corporate life wasn’t a good fit for a person with a young family. “One summer day when I was still in high school, my job was to sit on top of a water tower and move the rigging around while the other guys sprayed the final coat of paint. They took me up there with my lunch box in the morning and I didn’t come down until the end of the day, absolutely covered in paint. I loved it.”

Walker added that he joined the family business at the perfect time, since his father and uncle were already planning their retirement and looking for someone to take over.

“I still love all the things I liked about the business as a teenager — talking to clients and working with the team to accomplish something we can be proud of,” Walker said.

He also enjoys the pleasantly surprising discoveries that come with owning a business.

“I almost never know what I’m going to do on a particular day because an opportunity or issue could come up that requires me to quickly shift gears,” he said. “Every day is different and I like the variety.”

As the company’s president, Walker said he benefits from the lessons he learned while working for his dad, uncle and previous managers Dave Miller and Jamie Wright.

“They learned from all their rookie mistakes so I didn’t have to,” he said. “When they retired, it was challenging to replace

their experience, knowledge and connections but we have a great team in place to continue their legacy.”

Phil isn’t painting canvases now that he’s retired, but he is dedicating his time to something equally artistic: restoring antique motorcycles. He also still shows up at the company’s offices from time to time.

“My dad still keeps an office here and we love it,” Walker said. “When he’s here, sometimes it’s nice to talk to him about how he would bid a project or approach an opportunity in a certain way.”

The company’s 35-member workforce expands to 50 employees during its busy season, which typically runs — depending on the weather — from April to December.

Walker said finding talented tradespeople for painting jobs is always a challenge because there are no apprenticeships for this type of work.

“You really need to learn on the job when it comes to painting,” he said. “You need to see the ebb and flow of how painting works and understand it, especially if you’re coating steel. Our management team has 150 years of combined industrial coating experience. Not a lot of companies have that level of experience and knowledge to bring to projects.”

One of Walker’s top priorities is to build the company into something bigger. Two years ago, he moved Gray & Company to their current location at 3401 S. Kansas Ave. to make room for more employees as the company grows.

While house painting doesn’t always leave much room for creativity, Gray & Company fills its office walls with original artwork and photographs that showcase the company’s love of color — and their belief that a fresh coat of paint can make any space more beautiful for everyone who sees it.

Their striking art collection includes a landscape painting and a large collage created by Walker’s friend, the Kansas-based artist Zak Barnes. It also features photographs of Kansas taken by Pat Tryon, the in-house architect for Westar, the local energy company that has since rebranded as Evergy.

“As Pat traveled the state to work on Westar’s buildings, it was his hobby to take pictures of anything he found interesting,” Walker said. “At some point, Westar started transferring his photos to canvases and our company stretched them onto wooden frames. Westar used them to decorate their offices and buildings all over the state. There were hundreds of them, and we ended up with a few.”

Walker is optimistic that more men and women will consider the benefits of careers in construction just as he, his dad and his uncle did.

“During the past 21 years, I’ve gotten to know a lot of business owners in construction and we’re all focused on attracting future tradespeople,” he said. “We’re proud that we can offer good-paying jobs for men and women right out of high school with the potential to make six-figure salaries like many of our employees do. Construction is a great way to have a very rewarding career without the requirement of a college degree.