I recently had a question from a customer asking how they know the paint is what I say it is and not something (presumably cheaper) else. No one had asked that before and I think it is a worthy question.
I never expected to intended to get into the paint business. It seemed like a commodity business and a hassle to stock and store, and a source of problems if I ran out of one color or ordered other colors that nobody ended up wanting.
So I advised customers on what brands folks reported success with and left it up to you to get the right paint. But not every store carried a ‘good’ brand, or they were out of the right color and the customer rolled the dice with a new brand.
And I would get emails from customers who had a band with the paint peeling off in places, stuck fast in others, and just a mess.
The mission of BYB is for folks to turn a misery into a source of pride. Even if it is not ‘my’ fault, I can’t feel good if a customer goes from a plain band to a paint peeling, mess of a band.
One day I got another paint-mess email from a customer and it was the straw that broke the camel’s back. So decided to offer people the best quality paint options and then take responsibility for teaching the process of painting the band.
We personally like the quality of brands DecoArt and Liquitex. Even between them we feel one color is better than another, and some colors are not directly available so some colors we offer are custom created by us.
We don’t want to be in the paint business. Paint is messy to work with and labor intensive for me (I print the labels, apply to the bottles, mix the paint, pour the paint, and clean up bit of paint that always seems to get into the wild). Anyone in the screen printing business will tell you that it is a messy business!
This is the long answer as to why you likely will receive paint packaged by BYB. It is not because we are charging for quality and then putting cheap paint in the bottle. Doing that would be shooting everyone in the process in the foot. It is because we have to offer paint to fulfill our mission to you.