For a long time, I thought we were making a wood stain. Turns out we were headlining a concert! The first thing you notice at Mission Bell isn’t the wood, it’s the light.
Cold beams cut across the floor like stage rigs warming up before a show. The laser board hums, throwing sharp lines of red light across raw panels stacked like guitars waiting in the wings. Robotic arms swing like fans at a concert. Precise, rehearsed, never missing a cue. Then the blades start.
High-speed cutters scream through wood like a crowd hitting the first note of a set. Panels move, flip, align, everything in rhythm, everything on tempo. Sawdust lifts into the air and hangs there, a low fog drifting across the line like dry ice under a spotlight. It’s a performance. And it’s fast. Until it isn’t.
Because every show has a moment where the music drops out, and here, it happens at the stain booth. The lights are still on. The machines are still ready. The crowd is still screaming. But the chemistry slows everything down. Like long enough to leave the show.
Robots can’t outrun bad chemistry. In modern finishing lines, throughput isn’t limited by equipment anymore. It’s limited by cure kinetics.
Traditional stains take hours to flash. Then more time to cure. Then more layers. Then more time. The fans lose interest and move on. Then more time to topcoat. A floor full of machines built to move at the speed of lasers ends up waiting on molecules that haven’t caught up yet.
That’s the bottleneck. That’s where the music dies. Bye bye, Ms. American Pie.
We brought WeatherWood into that moment. Ran it through the booth. Let it play. Our stain flashed in 13 minutes. Our topcoat, because nothing off the shelf would hold our colors without killing them, cured in another 20. Thirty-three minutes, start to finish. The line didn’t stop.
After the test, someone at Mission Bell looked at the panels, then at the clock, and said: “Freeing up our bottleneck at that pace would let us do another building. But remember color is king.”
That line stays with you. Because it splits the problem clean in two.
The First Half: Throughput
Factories don’t wait on machines anymore. They wait on chemistry.
Cutting a process from hours down to 33 minutes doesn’t just save time. It rewrites capacity. It changes how many jobs you can take, how fast you can move, how much you can produce before the lights go out. Throughput is math.
The Second Half: Why It Matters
“The color was king.” Throughput gets you paid. Color gets you chosen. We didn’t build another version of oak, walnut, or amber. The category already has those. We built colors for how wood actually shows up now:
• feature walls that carry a room
• ceilings that define a space
• millwork that feels like architecture, not furniture
Carbon Timber. Heritage Gray. Driftwood. Reclamation. Black Bogwood. Names that don’t describe a color, they describe a moment.
Nobody walks into a space and says: “That’s a great polymer system.”
They say: “I want my place to feel like this.”
The chemistry is what makes that feeling repeatable. Durable. Fast.
But the feeling is what makes anyone care in the first place.
Where This Goes Next
We’re heading to the American Coatings Show in Indianapolis @Booth #3178.
We’ll bring the show, you bring your credit, cause its time to rock on… the color line. But we’re also working on something that sits just offstage.
Right now, finish decisions are made through samples, guesswork, and memory. You hold up a swatch. You imagine. You hope. If you think cure times are rough, try specifying colors. We’re building toward a different moment: The ability to see the finish on the actual surface, under the real light, before the can is opened.
Not as a gimmick. As a shift in where the decision gets made. Because once the result becomes predictable, the experience around it can change too.
If you’re at ACS 2026, come find us at Booth #3178.
If you’re running a line, building a space, or specifying a project, you already know the truth: The machines are ready. The systems are fast. It’s the chemistry that makes you believe the Elvis isn’t dead. The King is alive and vibrant with color.
Meet Becca Berger, a Silicon Valley-based CleanTech coatings inventor, who is using AI, VR, Apple Vision Pro, and solar power to disrupt paint and wood stains!☀️
Most disruptors solve a problem, what’s the problem?
Wood stain has been a professional's product for a hundred years. The DIY shelf carries the same chemistry the pros use, with the same failure modes, wipe-on, wipe-off technique, layered color tones, multi-day cure, and a smell that drives everyone out of the room.
For a DIYer attempting a high-stakes project, that's a bad deal. One wrong move means uneven color, a ruined surface, and hours of sanding if they need to start over. So most homeowners look at their oak end-table, picture the driftwood finish they really want, and either pay a finisher $800 or buy a brand new piece of furniture.
The category has optimized for professional control, not consumer confidence. There is no third option.
WeatherWash exists to create one.
So what's your solution?
"I built a stain that lets a DIYer get a look they couldn't achieve before," she says. "The tannin-reactive chemistry reacts with the wood itself, rather than laying a pigment on top of the wood like traditional products. Weatherwash is one simple coat. Just apply the stain and allow it to air dry. The trick is that the wood stops aging once it dries. That’s the part nobody’s done before. So the homeowner who pictured driftwood actually gets driftwood, on a Sunday."
WeatherWash is currently on shelves at Walmart, with additional distribution through major e-commerce platforms including HomeDepot.com, Lowes.com, and Amazon.com. That's in-aisle validation alongside national digital reach.
She slides a pair of Apple Vision Pro goggles over her green eyes. "But that's just the stain. The bigger problem is that the whole category runs on petroleum. The stain in your hardware store this morning came out of a 19th-century industrial process that's responsible for fifteen billion tons of carbon a year. I want the coatings world off oil." She hands me an AVP. "Here. Welcome to the future." 🦄
You're ambitious! What is your endgame vision?
"A category shift, but the shift happens gradually, one project at a time. The mechanism is the gap between how legacy wood stains were designed to be used and how today’s DIY customer actually wants to work.
Look at SHW’s most recent 10-K. The Consumer Brands Group, which includes Minwax and Cabot, reported growth in 2025, but most of the gain came through acquisition rather than organic volume expansion. Across the category, participation in DIY is increasing while many legacy systems still rely on professional application techniques and multi-step workflows.
At the same time, DIY participation grew to 56% of consumers in 2024, up from 50% the year before. More people are entering the category, but they want simpler application, lower odor, faster cure times, and more predictable results.
That’s the space WeatherWash is building for.
Our customer is often a design-conscious DIYer who wants the Restoration Hardware look without needing the skill set of a professional finisher. They want a finish that feels architectural, but an application process that feels approachable.
The shift isn’t happening through price competition. It’s happening through user experience. Once a DIYer gets the finish they wanted on the first try, in a single weekend, they tend not to return to slower, multi-step systems. We’re approaching price parity at roughly $19.97 on the shelf, which reduces friction for customers already looking for an alternative."
How will you market those products?
"Right now the engine is Instagram. We’ve built an audience of more than 31K followers around the category, largely through organic project sharing rather than paid acquisition. For a coatings brand, especially in wood finishes, that matters because the product is visual. People don’t discover stain chemistry first; they discover a room, a table, a wall, or a finish they want to recreate.
The loop is straightforward. A DIYer finishes a project they’re proud of, posts it, and other DIYers see the result and ask how it was done. The chemistry turns into visual proof. That’s how the audience compounds.
The flywheel runs on three things: finish quality people want to photograph, educational content that lowers project risk for first-time users, and a community that sees itself in the work. The founder voice helps early on, but the stronger signal is customer-generated content. The projects themselves become the marketing.
What’s interesting strategically is that this kind of acquisition engine is difficult to replicate after the fact. A large marketing budget can buy reach, but it doesn’t automatically create trust or participation. In categories like wood finishing, where the customer is showing their work publicly inside their home, authenticity compounds over time."
What is the difference between clean tech coatings and regular coatings?
"CleanTech coatings are designed around a broader systems approach to performance. That includes renewable raw materials, lower-emission manufacturing inputs, reduced VOC exposure, longer maintenance cycles, and formulations engineered to improve durability while lowering environmental burden across the product lifecycle.
The category is moving beyond simply asking whether a coating performs. The more important question is whether it can deliver performance while reducing the energy, toxicity, and maintenance costs traditionally associated with coatings systems.
WeatherWash is my flagship CleanTech coating. The broader product line operates under CleanTech Coatings, where the goal is to align chemistry, manufacturing, and use-phase performance into a more sustainable architectural-finishing system."
Do they perform as well as products on the shelf?
"Better, and I can support that with the receipts, published labels, performance data, and third-party validation.
Many conventional wood stains still rely on solvent-heavy systems that carry elevated VOC levels, Prop 65 warnings, or sensitizer classifications. PPG independently validated WeatherWash’s sub-13 minute dry time under test conditions, while several incumbent systems on the shelf still specify hour-scale dry windows. Across the category, regulatory and environmental pressure is steadily pushing chemistry toward lower-VOC and lower-toxicity formulations.
WeatherWash uses a waterborne, low-toxicity system designed for low VOC exposure and simplified application. The goal wasn’t just to make a cleaner stain. It was to build a system that performs at an architectural level while reducing some of the friction traditionally associated with wood finishing — odor, dry time, layering complexity, and rework.
The honest answer on price is yes, we’re currently about 69 cents above Varathane per quart at retail. That’s the CleanTech premium at our current scale. My expectation is that continuous-flow manufacturing, batch expansion, and process efficiencies will close that gap over time while preserving the same chemistry, dry-time performance, and application simplicity.
The larger point is that the category is moving toward chemistry that performs better and asks less of the end user at the same time."
How will you teach the masses?
"This is why I'm developing a quality of life app that uses virtual reality and AI to scan colors in the home and make matching recommendations. Think about how Tesla sold you a Cybertruck. You didn't walk into a dealership. You opened an app, picked the configuration, saw it rendered in your driveway, put down a deposit, and waited for the truck to show up. Tesla didn't make the truck simpler. It made the decision simpler, by giving the buyer everything the dealership used to provide at the moment they actually wanted it, instead of forcing them into a parking lot on a Saturday.
That's the move for coatings. The DIYer's current path is three or four decisions and at least two trips to Home Depot, and most of them don't get past step three. The category lost the sale before the can left the shelf.
Spatial computing collapses the path. The room becomes the input. A scan captures the wall color, the wood tone, the lighting. An AI layer recommends matching products and renders them in place before the DIYer commits, entertainment center in WeatherWash Driftwood, next to the wall they already have, on the floor they already have. They order from the room, in the room, on a Sunday morning, and the quart shows up same day. We're building toward that loop.
The chemistry is what makes it honest. A rendered finish only works if the actual finish matches the render, and the only way to guarantee a one-coat match is a chemistry that reacts with the wood instead of sitting on top of it. The visualization breaks the moment the customer applies the product and the result doesn't look like the preview. The platform is downstream of the can.
And the chemistry does something the app can't: it de-skills the application. A DIYer with zero experience gets the Restoration Hardware look on a Saturday. No layering. No wipe-on-wipe-off. The app tells them what to buy; the chemistry tells the wood what to do. The DIYer is in between, holding a brush, and the result still comes out right.
That's the takeover mechanism. Not a marketing campaign. Not a price war. The DIYer who finishes their first project on a Saturday and posts the result doesn't go back to wipe-on-wipe-off chemistry the next weekend, instead they tell three friends, and the friends don't go to Minwax either. The legacy brands keep their shelf space and lose the next generation of buyer at the same time. Slow at first. Then all at once.
Capture the sale at home. Make the result foolproof. Repeat. Whoever owns that loop in three years owns category definition. Apple Vision Pro is one path into spatial computing, it might be the winning platform, it might not. The thesis doesn't depend on AVP. It depends on spatial computing as a category arriving on a timeline that lets the chemistry meet it. I think it does. The chemistry is already here. We're building the rest."
Ok, I get it, that's the tech piece, so what's the problem with oil-based coatings?
"Three things, and they compound.
First, oil-based stain was built for the professional applicator. The technique is wipe on, wipe off, layer the tones, move fast before it sets. That is a learned skill. If you haven’t learned it, you get blotching, drag marks, uneven color, and a piece you may have to sand back down and start over. I know because that was me. I could see the finish I wanted in my head, but I couldn’t get the stain to give it to me.
Second, the chemistry is hard to live with. The odor, the VOCs, the petroleum-based solvents — all of it turns a simple Saturday project into something you have to plan around. You shouldn’t have to refinish your kitchen table and then chase everyone out of the house while it dries.
Third, the dry times are out of step with how people actually do projects now. A DIYer who starts Saturday morning wants to see progress Saturday afternoon, not wait days between coats and hope the first layer was right.
So I built a stain that fixes all three at once. Tannin-reactive waterborne chemistry, controlled-stop reaction, one coat, fast cure. The Restoration Hardware look on a weekend, at a Walmart price. That's the value. The rest is execution."
While she works, I learn that a combination of events inspired her. First was a quote from Tim Cook in the "Elysis" project press release (link.) The second was in Bill Gates book "How to Avoid a Climate Disaster.
"As a painter and furniture artist, I knew there had to be a better way to finish wood than the systems I was using. Around the same time, I was paying attention to what companies like Apple were doing around sustainability and manufacturing, and it made me start thinking differently about coatings as a category.
I didn’t begin with a business plan. I started with frustration. I couldn’t get the finishes I wanted without complicated application techniques, strong solvents, long dry times, and a lot of trial and error. So I started writing about those experiences on my blog and talking to other DIYers to see if they were running into the same problems.
They were.
I began calling readers directly and asking simple questions about what they actually wanted from wood stain. I assumed people cared most about color. What I learned was that they cared just as much about ease of use, odor, dry time, and whether the chemistry felt safe enough to use inside their homes.
That shifted the direction completely.
Waterborne wood stain made sense to me because the category itself hadn’t fundamentally changed in decades. The chemistry was still largely built around systems designed for professional finishers. I believed there was room for a different approach — one designed around modern materials, lower-VOC chemistry, and a customer who wanted architectural results without professional technique.
So the stain was your minimum viable product, did your customers want more than a wood stain?
"Yes! That's exactly what happened, my Instagram blew up with an enthusiastic group of customers demanding water-based wood stain, but leaving with so much more. I was able to extrapolate that they basically wanted me to make VOC free furniture paint (link), wall paint (link), oil-based wood stains (link),toners and topcoats (link). The survey results have helped with optimizing my strategy. My hypothesis so far, is that, their demands will shape the whole product line. With each new sku, margin costs will fall and the entire line should ease into profit-market fit," Becca explains as she uses an air compressor to mix raw ingredients in a 330-gallon tote."
Wood stain is a commodity, so the lifetime value of the customer is good, but how do you plan to cross what Geoffrey Moore calls the "Chasm," and establish the lifetime value with the majority markets?
"My strategy is to make the product good enough that the chemistry becomes the marketing. The chasm crosses one DIYer at a time. Every finished project posted online becomes a piece of evidence the next customer uses to decide whether they trust the product.
Price parity matters, because it lowers friction for people already looking for an alternative. But the larger shift is experience. If someone gets the finish they wanted on the first try, in a single weekend, they usually don’t go back to slower, multi-step systems.
We also use the products themselves as part of the education layer. Customers can scan a QR code on the quart and immediately watch application videos, project examples, and recommendations for the next coating in the system. That lets us expand naturally into adjacent categories like topcoats, furniture paint, and wall paint as customers move from one project to the next.
As more data comes in from customers, projects, and application conditions, we keep refining the system. In some ways, it’s similar to iterative product design in software — observe behavior, reduce friction, improve the experience, repeat.
Since 2022, WeatherWash has generated approximately $1.35 million in wood stain sales. The path from here is operational discipline: improving throughput, reducing labor and material costs, expanding distribution carefully, and making sure the product economics stay healthy while the system scales."
Can you tell me about the coatings market total attainable market?
“The U.S. architectural coatings market — the paints, stains, and finishes consumers buy through retail channels — is roughly a $20 billion market today and continues to grow steadily. Within that, the wood stain segment alone represents a multi-billion-dollar category that has been expanding faster than the broader coatings market, driven by renovation activity, aging housing stock, and increased DIY participation.
But the more interesting shift isn’t the market size. It’s the change in buying behavior underneath it. The next generation of DIY customers approaches coatings differently than previous generations did. They expect lower-friction purchasing, faster project completion, clearer guidance, and results that feel predictable rather than technique-dependent. They are less willing to spend an entire weekend layering coats, waiting on cure times, and hoping the color develops the way they imagined. They want the architectural look without the professional learning curve.
That shift matters because it changes where growth concentrates. Products designed around consumer confidence, simplified application, and faster project velocity naturally fit the way newer customers already want to buy and work. My product quadrant — wood stain, wall paint, furniture paint, and topcoats — sits across several adjacent decorative-coatings categories connected by the same customer behavior. Someone refinishes an end table, then wants the dining table to match. Then the walls need to work with the furniture. Then the exterior gets refreshed. The projects compound.
What matters strategically is distribution. WeatherWash products are already positioned inside some of the highest-traffic retail ecosystems in the country through Walmart, HomeDepot.com, Amazon, and related channels. You don’t have to create demand from scratch when your products already sit where the traffic exists. The challenge becomes conversion, repeatability, and expanding shelf presence over time.
I believe the coatings quadrant can scale meaningfully from here, but not through linear growth. Coatings businesses tend to expand through step-function events: new store doors, additional SKUs, broader retail placement, and increased turns per shelf. Every time distribution expands, the economics change materially. The interesting question is not whether the category continues to grow. It’s whether the next generation of customers continues moving toward systems built around lower-friction purchasing, faster project velocity, and more predictable outcomes. I think they will.”
Do you have an economic model?
"The forward looking model with retailers is [(price) x (number of skus) x (number of stores) x (number of shelves) x (inventory turns) ^ Brand] = Revenue. The way these coatings behave inside a home is almost funnel-like. Someone refinishes an end table, then decides the kitchen table needs to match. Then the entertainment center feels out of place. Then the walls need to work with the furniture. Eventually the exterior and deck become part of the same design language. In a category tied so closely to trends and visual identity, one successful project tends to create the next one.
That’s why customer lifetime value matters more than any single quart sale. The opportunity isn’t just selling one coating. It’s building a system customers continue returning to as their projects evolve.
From a business standpoint, the key variables are product education, repeatability, distribution expansion, and inventory velocity. I have healthy margins today, but the larger growth lever is retail scale — expanding distribution thoughtfully, increasing turns per shelf, and building enough trust in the system that customers move naturally from one project category into the next.”
Who is your target customer?
"Our target DIY client is referred to as LOHAS (link). They talk to me through Instagram, which is a great place to A/B test them. IG is a high-density network where LOHAS will recommend products through word-of-mouth. LOHAS feels what I felt. Simply put, they want products that do 80% of the work for the end user, while they do 20% of the application. They want fast cure times, with one step-application, not several layers. They want clean coatings and resist using products with strong chemical odors. LOHAS wants a guide to reduce the risk of project failure. They tend to make purchasing decisions based off their values rather than price. They're educated and intelligent. They want the RH colors, but they want to save money and brag about how they did it themselves. They want a community to do projects with and share projects with, on social media.
In 2020, LOHAS represented one-third of home purchases. The majority of Home Depot ($157B) clients are DIY consumers who are fixing up homes to sell or repairing homes they've just bought. I see a lot of LOHAS crossover between the world's two largest retailers, Walmart and Home Depot. The LOHAS market is much bigger than just coatings. These are the clients responsible for Lululemon's success. The LOHAS market represents $472.5B (TAM) in revenue as of 2022."
What is your biggest hurdle?
"Distribution. For decades, the major coatings companies have controlled the retail shelf through scale, operations, and channel relationships that are extremely difficult for smaller brands to replicate. That’s the reality of the category. Shelf space compounds over time, and once a brand is embedded across thousands of stores, the advantage becomes structural.
What’s interesting right now is that the market itself is shifting underneath that structure. Kelly Moore’s exit released a significant amount of demand back into the market, while several large coatings companies have increasingly focused on higher-margin specialty positioning rather than broad expansion alone. At the same time, the next generation of DIY customers is behaving differently than previous generations did — they are more willing to discover products digitally, move between brands, and prioritize ease of use, environmental profile, and project confidence over legacy brand familiarity.
The challenge for a company at my stage is scale. I haven’t yet crossed the distribution threshold the incumbents operate at, where products move through thousands of retail doors simultaneously and operational leverage starts compounding on itself. Price parity matters there because large-scale distribution changes the economics of manufacturing, freight, and inventory velocity very quickly.
But I also think the category is becoming more open to new systems than it has been historically. Once customers experience a finish that reduces friction — faster dry times, simplified application, predictable color development — they tend to reevaluate what they expect from the category overall. That creates room for newer chemistry to move faster than smaller brands traditionally could."
Becca attributes her success to lessons she learned in her MBA operations class. She has capitalized off of continuous flow manufacturing (CFM) and just-in-time delivery (JIT) processes that she learned in MBA case studies. What are some constraints that you're experiencing as you scale?
"Warehouse capacity and price parity to start. When we first launched in gallon milk jugs on my apartment deck, space was an obvious issue, and costs were high. Now that we've grown into multiple 330-gallon totes, our next increase will put us in 15,000-gallon stainless steel vats. The biggest constraint of any CleanTech product is going to be price parity.
Right now my price on the shelf is $19.97. My competitors are around $15.97 to $19.39. The end consumer is paying a CleanTech premium when they buy WeatherWash. In truth, you only have to use one of my quarts compared to the multiple quarts you have to buy to match my colors with Minwax. But, with more orders, my total manufacturing output will increase, and labor efficiencies will improve. I'll pass those decreases on to the end consumer and get my price in line with my competitors. I might even land at $14.97 on the shelf. That’s when the conversion really accelerates, because it’s no longer a premium decision, it’s just the better product."
As states have begun to regulate paint and stain emissions, do you see any opportunities to capture those laggard markets?
"States could accelerate the inevitable switch from oil to water through regulation. California has already started regulating the coatings industry in a way that forced many manufacturers to leave California. I think a better solution would be for lawmakers to use tax incentives and subsidies to shape consumer behavior. It would be nice if state and federal governments would give CleanTech coatings the same incentives they give solar and wind. Could you imagine the impact regulation would make if lawmakers required 25% of paint and stain to be carbon-free? The same way they require 25% of grid energy to be renewable? The reduction targets two primary points of emission. Reduced carbon from plant manufacturing and reduced carbon/VOC off-letting from product application.
How is your product innovative?
"My product is innovative because it’s tannin reactive. Once the stain is applied, the chemistry engages with the wood itself and the color develops from inside the substrate rather than sitting on top of it as a surface pigment layer.
What makes the system commercially viable is the controlled-stop mechanism. Reactive wood chemistry has existed for a long time, but uncontrolled reactions continue aging past the target color. Our process is engineered around a controlled endpoint, with the formulation, process conditions, and reaction window maintained as proprietary trade secrets.
The larger point isn’t just weathered wood tones, even though that’s where I started. It’s about a better way to stain wood altogether — one that keeps the full grain character visible while reducing layering, sanding, uneven absorption, and the amount of technique required to get a high-end result.
Traditional pigment-heavy systems can obscure the grain or force the user to build color slowly through multiple passes. I wanted a system where the wood still feels like wood when the project is finished. The grain remains fully visible, the color develops naturally through the substrate, and the process itself becomes simpler and more predictable for the person applying it.
From the manufacturing side, innovation usually shows up in the same places every time — reducing labor, reducing material complexity, and improving throughput without sacrificing performance."
What's the difference between Sherwin William's manufacturing process and yours?
"When I started building the manufacturing side of WeatherWash, I kept coming back to something Bill Gates wrote in How to Avoid a Climate Disaster: if we want to materially reduce emissions, we need cleaner chemistry, cleaner manufacturing, and breakthrough systems that scale together rather than separately.
That became the constraint I designed around. I approached manufacturing with one core question: how do you reduce energy intensity at the process level, not just at the facility level?
First, I developed a waterborne system designed to eliminate VOC-heavy solvents and reduce hazardous inputs without sacrificing performance.
Second, instead of relying exclusively on conventional electric or fossil-fuel heating, I integrated direct solar-thermal input into the batch process itself. The goal wasn’t to build a symbolic “green” factory. It was to reduce external energy demand where the chemistry actually happens.
Third, I wanted to prove that the model could operate beyond the lab. WeatherWash is already in retail distribution, including Walmart, which means the chemistry, manufacturing, and customer demand all have to function together under real commercial conditions.
Historically, coatings manufacturing scaled on inexpensive fossil energy and solvent-heavy systems. I think the next generation of coatings companies will scale differently — through lower-energy chemistry, more efficient manufacturing, and systems designed around sustainability from the start rather than retrofitted afterward."
Weatherwash Plant
"On scale, industrial manufacturing systems built around fossil-fuel energy account for an enormous share of global energy consumption and carbon emissions. Coatings is only one piece of that picture, but it’s still part of the larger industrial model the world is now trying to rethink.
I don’t believe the long-term future of coatings manufacturing will be built around increasingly expensive solvent-heavy systems and rising energy inputs. I think the companies that win over the next few decades will be the ones that figure out how to lower energy demand, reduce emissions, and simplify chemistry at the same time.
That’s the direction I’m building toward."
Becca tosses what looks like herbs into a large plastic tote, pinching a little of this and folding in a little of that with a wooden oar while air compressors pulse in the background. The operation feels strangely analog and futuristic at the same time — part chemistry lab, part workshop, part production line.
Are your materials renewable?
"My formulas use renewable and lower-impact raw materials where they make technical sense, and the manufacturing process is designed around low-energy processing, including direct solar-thermal input.
I measure output as gallons produced per unit of energy consumed, and at current scale, that gives me a practical way to track energy intensity as we grow. On the product side, the chemistry is waterborne and designed for low VOC exposure compared with traditional solvent-heavy stain systems.
As we scale, the next step is third-party lifecycle analysis so we can validate the full environmental impact instead of relying on internal estimates. The objective is straightforward: keep reducing energy intensity, VOC exposure, and process emissions as we move toward a lower-carbon manufacturing model for coatings."
Circling back to the stain, your product is truly magic in a quart, but your operation is next level. You said that you use the power of the sun to make the product. Can you tell me how you do that?
"Everyone talks about using solar to power the plant. I became more interested in whether solar could reduce the energy demand inside the process itself.
Instead of relying entirely on electric or fossil-fuel heating, I use direct solar-thermal input to help heat and process batches inside the vessel. The formulation and process are designed to retain heat efficiently, which reduces the amount of external energy required during production.
As we scale, automation and additional energy infrastructure — including conventional and solar-generated electricity — will support higher throughput and tighter process control. The larger goal is to build a manufacturing system that gradually reduces reliance on fossil-energy inputs at both the process and facility level.
That’s what I think the next generation of coatings manufacturing looks like: lower-energy chemistry, lower-emission processing, and systems designed around efficiency from the beginning rather than retrofitted afterward. 🇺🇸"
How do efficiencies play a role in CleanTech?
""Efficiencies are what make CleanTech claims real. The built environment accounts for a significant share of global carbon emissions, so coatings manufacturing has to think beyond the product itself and look at the entire process around it.
The five areas I focus on most are raw materials, workspace efficiency, energy use, labor efficiency, and plant operations. My goal is straightforward: maximize useful output while reducing the amount of energy, waste, and process friction required to get there.
At our current scale, we internally track the operation at roughly 78% process efficiency under measured operating conditions. As we scale, some efficiencies will naturally compress during expansion before improving again through automation, process refinement, and larger production volumes. The long-term direction is toward a manufacturing system that becomes more efficient as the chemistry, equipment, and throughput mature together."
If you had one wish, what would it be?
"Distribution at the speed the chemistry deserves. The product is ready. The application is straightforward. The customer response is real. The limiting factor now is scale — getting the product in front of the next generation of DIY customers in the markets where they’re already searching for alternatives.
In coatings, distribution compounds. Every additional retail door increases visibility, lowers logistics friction, improves manufacturing efficiency, and creates more opportunities for repeat purchase behavior to develop around the system.
If there’s one thing I’d accelerate tomorrow, it’s thoughtful retail expansion. The chemistry moves faster once the shelf does."
What would you give up?
"Take a look around you. Everything I have here is for sale, including things you can't see, like equity. Hang tight, it looks like my staff is overflowing a tote. I gotta go. Are we done here?"
*****
That's a wrap.
I'm surprised Becca can even hear me over the air compressors, the shouting, the continuous lid hammering. She is laser-focused on the batch and somehow answers every question even though we're interrupted a dozen times by managers and employees. The operation is a real operation. That part is not a pitch deck.
Here is what I think a coatings strategist would take away from a day at WeatherWash.
The chemistry is substantiated. Tannin-reactive waterborne stain with a controlled-stop reaction is a genuine chemistry differentiator, not a marketing claim. A polymer chemist can understand the mechanism quickly. Getting it to stop consistently across different wood species, moisture levels, and real-world application variance is where most attempts break. That’s the moat.
The manufacturing is real. Solar-thermal direct-capture cooking the batch inside the tote, 78% efficiency today, 92% target at scale. The numbers will need diligence. The operation will not.
The brand franchise is structurally interesting.31,300 Instagram followers, more than Minwax, more than Varathane, with no paid acquisition spend. That's an organic LOHAS-acquisition capability the incumbents don't have and can't buy at any price. It's the part of the asset that compounds the longest.
The platform is roadmap, not product. The room-scan visualization layer, the AI recommendation engine, the rendered-in-place finish preview, direction of travel. Becca and her team are building toward it; they're not selling it yet. The chemistry is the wedge. The platform only works because the chemistry already does.
The category is at a moment. The legacy DIY brands are flat-to-down on volume. DIY participation is up. The next-generation buyer is forming preferences online, on Instagram, on Vision Pro and whatever comes after, and the brands they pick today are the brands they'll buy from for thirty years. The question for any incumbent is whether they want to compete for that buyer or watch a one-woman operation in California acquire her without them.
The ripple thesis, in one sentence. Light bulbs, alternating current, and the automobile redrew their categories not when they were invented but when the supporting infrastructure caught up. WeatherWash is the chemistry. Spatial computing is the infrastructure catching up.
An incumbent can try to replicate the chemistry, rebuild the community, and retrain the DIY customer, or they can acquire it already working. The question isn’t whether WeatherWash fits inside a coatings portfolio. It’s whether a coatings portfolio can afford not to have it.
“Paging Doctor Cullen, you have an interview with Zack and Becca, writers for the blog From Gardners 2 Bergers. Report to Forever Twilight in Forks (FTF), Washington, STAT!”
“I’m on it!” Peter Facinelli says, as he takes his seat under a pine gazebo at the Pacific Inn Motel, in Forks, Washington.
Peter is here signing books and taking pictures at the Forever Twilight in Forks Festival. He's incredibly genuine. Friendly and easily approachable. To the west, the sun is setting and the colors are breath taking. To the east, the clouds have lost their place in the gray sky. They settle into the towering evergreens that crowd the rolling hills behind Peter and add an eerie effect. We are literally sitting down with a Vampire in his home town. He is wearing an Aviator Nation sweatshirt. He pulls his hoody over his head and asks, “so what do you do?”
Zack: “My wife invented a wood stain that turns raw wood into barnwood.” I expect Peter to show zero interest.
Peter: “Really? You take raw wood and it kind of ages it?” Peter asks with way more interest than I expected.
Becca: “It’s an all-natural process, you just apply the stain to raw wood and you can see one hundred percent of the wood grain,” Becca says as she’s said in hundreds of interviews.
The interview has taken an unexpected turn.Peter is interviewing us, instead of us interviewing Peter. What’s going on here?
P: “How long does it take to get that old look?” Peter wonders.
B: “Takes about ten minutes and it’s ready for a topcoat. Your whole project can be done in under an hour. It’s a tannin-based reactive stain, earth-friendly and VOC free!” Becca beams, super proud of her creation.
P: “I love doing woodworking. I grew up doing carpentry with my Uncle. I did that during the summers. I could build anything out of wood. I could build this gazebo. Recently, I did a birdcage with a sliding door,” Peter leans forward. He’s holding the birdcage between his empty hands, somehow, we can all see it. As he goes on, we learn that he’s quite the woodworker and a knowledgeable finisher. “You know this is a billion-dollar idea right?”
Bec smiles and nods, “We did just get into Walmart!”
Z: “You know Peter, you’re an extraordinary guy who seems remarkably ordinary,” I say, as we settle into our woodworking comfort zone.
P: “That’s great! It’s good to be ordinary.” He says as he scrolls through our portfolio, he friend-requests Rebecca.
She accepts. They’re "fast" friends.
Z: “Ok, so you’re going to be our celebrity endorser?” I ask.
P: “Maybe!” Peter smiles and winks.
Z: “Great! So you’re a finisher in real life, a vampire doctor, a human doctor, a special forces operator, a Sheriff in the old west, and many other things in the make-believe world of Hollywood.”
Peter nods.
Z: “What does nine-to-five look like for you?”
P: “Constant change. Lots of preparation. Tons of research.”
Z: “So you’re from Queens, NYC.”
P: “Yes!”
Z: “You have three siblings. Where do you rank?”
P: “I'm last.”
Z: “Three older sisters? That's more Barbies than G.I. Joe's. #Roughbro. Your parents are from Italy?”
P: “Yep.”
Z: “Your mother is from, Spormaggiore, how do you pronounce that?”
Peter annunciates the town without missing a beat. Even though I speak Italian, I butcher it. Curse that double ‘g.’
Z: “Your father is from Trentino?”
P: “Yeah.”
Z: “It’s pretty cool that they were so close to fair Verona when they fell in love.”
Peter nods, “I never thought about that. But yeah, both of their towns are right there in Val Di Non Valley, Northern Italy.”
B: “We visited Verona, so we got to see what the countryside looks like.”
P: “It’s a beautiful country.”
Z: “Take us back to high school at Saint Francis Preparatory, what was your best moment in high school.
Peter shuffles. His face wrinkles as though he’s just licked a lemon, “high school wasn’t a good time for me. I was incredibly shy and I didn’t want to eat lunch with the other kids. So, I found a quite place where a woman sold pretzels and orange juice and that was my, uhm… my lunch every day for three years.”
‘Peter shy? Are you kidding me?’ I think.
Z: “Did you play a sport?”
P: “Baseball.”
Z: “That’s ironic.” I’m thinking back to the Twilight baseball game.
P: “There was this one game, I quit the high school team because the coach was a jerk and so I played for another team. There was this one play where the bases were loaded, there was only a few minutes left on the clock in the last inning and I hit a home run. We were tied up and that home run won the game. The old coach saw the play and realized his mistake.” Peter smiles.
B: “We saw a game with the Rangers and Red Sox just like that. It was nail-biting.”
Z: “Who is your favorite sports team?”
P: “Yankees.”
Z: “Who is your favorite player?”
P: “Babe Ruth. He would point where he was going to hit the ball and then hit it there. That was incredible.”
Z: “So you’re in high school, headed to college at New York University. At what point did you decide to become an actor?”
P: “For me it was much sooner. It was when I was thirteen, the topic of career came up with my family and I told my parents I wanted to be an actor. They didn’t discourage me, in fact, they encouraged me.”
Bec and I look at each other, completely shocked. Why? When I told my Mom I wanted to be an actor she said, “go to college first and act on the side.”
P: “I never had a back up plan because I was taught that if you have a back up plan, that becomes the plan.”
Peter is right, Momma! I ended up using my degree and not acting >:-/
Z: “When Bec and I lived in Italy, all these Italian fathers had interesting sayings for their sons. One that we liked the most was, ‘better to buy a suit than a glass of water.’ Does your Dad have any cool sayings?”
P: “No. Not really.”
B: “Your parents must be incredibly proud of you.”
P: “Actually, that’s the funny thing, my Dad and I are on this plane with all these actors that have lesser roles than me at the time and he’s like, ‘do you think Peter will make it?’ My parents are immigrants, so they just don’t get how far I’ve come. In fact, my Dad was like, ‘Peter, if you don’t make it in Hollywood, that’s okay. I love you and I will always have a room for you in my home.’”
Bec and I look at each other. We’ve never met this man, but we love him!
Z: “Well there you go Peter. You’re Dad’s Italian saying is, ‘There’s a room for you in my house, son.”
B: “So you studied acting in college. Was there one specific method that you preferred over another?”
Peter has a lot to say about this. If any of you thought acting was just memorizing lines and shooting ten second scenes, think again. There’s voice training. Stage acting. Camera acting. And the two are not the same. Peter lists a dozen books and several methods that contribute to his “craft”. Clearly his education at NYU has paid off. His performance takes audiences to a different world. A world where admittance is belief. He’s so passionate about his craft, he spends forty minutes talking about it. By the end of his answer Bec and I are blown away with how much mechanical aptitude it takes to create a convincing character.
B: “So I recently watched ‘The Vanished,’ how did you come up with that idea?”
P: “A couple of years ago, I got into RV-ing. I took my family across America and we stopped in all these really cool little towns. One of the towns we stopped in, this guy at the counter let me know that the prison nearby had a convict escape and a manhunt was under way. For a brief moment, I lost track of one of my kids, and found them, but I thought, ‘what if this man had found my daughter and kidnapped her? That would be terrifying.’ I didn’t get much sleep that night because of the fear I felt and I couldn’t shake the feeling so I caught it on film.”
Z: “You had a lot of success with that. How many people viewed it on Netflix?”
P: “Two hundred million.”
B: “TWO HUNDRED MILLION? That’s two thirds of the nation’s population. What was the budget?”
P: “One and a half million.”
Z: “You got two hundred million people to watch a film you wrote, directed, and acted in on a one and a half million-dollar budget?”
P: “Yeah. Pretty cool, huh?”
Z: “Yeah! I’d imagine you’re a hot item in Hollywood. Directors like you are like snow leopards.”
P: “What do you mean?”
Z: “Snow Leopards are rarely seen, but they exist. Well look at Spielberg for example. He almost didn’t have a career because he kept going over budget. If it wasn’t for George Lucas bringing him on for Indiana Jones, Spielberg’s career might have died early. So, a guy that can generate that kind of viewership with a small budget must be rare, but exist.”
P: “We’ll see. It’s all kind of fresh still,” he says relaxed and un-phased. Like I said, an extraordinary man that seems abnormally ordinary.
B: “Can we talk about Twilight now?”
P: “Of course!”
B: “How did you get the part?”
P: “That is a funny story. I auditioned and so did this other guy, Henry Cavill, and it looked like he got the part of Carlisle Cullen. As I was doing my research, I stumbled on a book titled, “History of the Vampire.” Since I didn’t get the part, I thought I could help Catherine Hardwick out and maybe network for the future. I wrote a quick note in the book and sent it to her. When the part didn’t work out with the other guy, she got my note and called me. So I got the part because I gave Catherine a $29.99 book.”
B: “How did you prepare for the role of Doctor Carlisle Cullen?”
P: “I did a lot of research. I even kept these journals and that’s all part of the craft right? When I prepare for a role, I want to know as much about the character as I can. Learning about what doctors do wasn’t so hard, but what required a little more intense research was what a doctor might wear throughout the years. As I was doing my research, I kind of felt like Carlisle would have had an interest in scarves. I traced the fashion of scarves back to his era and incorporated those scarves into my character. I was using it as a thread through time to tie in the history of his life together through out the film.”
B: “Can we shop Doctor Cullen Scarves?”
P: “That’s an interesting idea, I’ll have to think about it.”
Z: "You should post the journals online. I know a lot of fans in the Facebook groups would love that."
P: "I'll look into that. It would be nice for them to experience Carlisle Cullen's view of 'Twilight' right?"
B: “Are you still in touch with the cast?”
P: “Yes! Definitely! We all keep in contact with each other. Nikki and I just worked on a project together, and we all text each other often. We kind of grew up together in Hollywood, you know.”
B: “What’s your favorite story about your son, Edward?”
P: “When I first met Rob, he had all these hair extensions. For some reason, they wanted him to have long hair. And I noticed he was kind of pulling on them. The next day, he had pulled all of his hair extensions out and he was like, ‘I’m not doing it, okay! I’m using my natural hair.'”
B: OMG, this reminds me of when Anna Kendrick called him "the hair," in Breaking Dawn Part 1.
Z: “In your own words, how would you describe Twilight?”
P: “It’s the modern Romeo and Juliet, right?”
Z: In the back of my mind, I’m thinking, 'if only we could rewind the clock to Juliet’s house which is actually in “fair” Verona, Italy, not far from Peter's parents home towns. I’m wondering if Peter's ancestors knew he was in a modern Romeo and Juliet love story, what would they think?' By the way 'Trivial Pursuit' readers, Capulet was a real family name! (Below you can see some pictures of her balcony that we took in 2019.)
P: (Continued) Twilight is a great love story that incorporates forbidden love between a vampire and a young girl that every girl wants to be. But the best part of this story is that it brings fans together from all across the world. They form these relationships that they otherwise wouldn’t have and it was such a great experience to be a part of it.”
B: I’m not sure if Peter has seen the map in the Fork's Visitor Center, but people from across the world have placed a pin on the map and you can see below just how many people have been affected by "Twilight". Keep in mind, they traveled from these states and countries to physically place their pin.
Z: “If you had an unlimited budget, what movie would you make? Who would direct it? Who would star in it?”
P: “Oh that’s easy, I’d do a gangster movie. Something like Scarface. I would star in it. I would direct it.”
B: “Are you excited about fashion?”
P: “I’m not a snob or anything. I like form and function. Comfort is ideal."
Z: “Do you have a favorite artist?”
P: Rene Magritte.
B: “Do you have any cool Dad sayings for your kids?”
P: “Believe in yourself and follow your dreams!”
Z: “You’ve been to Italy and across America, do you have a favorite architect?”
P: “I like Spanish style. I like how architecture changes across the country. Even the brick color changes. I like Modern, too. I like Frank Lloyd Wright. I really like Frank Gehry, he did the Disney Concert Hall in L.A. I love what he does.”
Z: “Halloween is fast approaching. What scary movies are you watching and what are you dressing up as?”
P: “I don’t watch scary movies. They give me nightmares. The costume is a hard one for me. I feel like I have ideas of what I’m going to dress up like and then Halloween comes and I never know what I’m going to wear. Can I get back to you on that one?”
Z: “Wanna do a scary picture together?”
P: “Sure!”
Z: “Let's do wolf claws! Roooaaarrr!”
Z: “Peter! Bec and I did wolf claws, what are you doing?”
P: “Smoldering wolf claws.”
B: “Do you have a favorite movie that you’ve been in?”
P: “I have really enjoyed all the films I’ve worked in. I love them all. I can’t really pick one over the other.”
Z: “What’s your favorite app?”
P: “I like Instagram. I have a love hate relationship with TikTok. It’s so entertaining, people do the stupidest things on there, I just can’t stop watching it. There are such quick little segments you could just scroll forever.”
Z: “What’s your favorite video game?”
P: “I don’t play video games. I grew up on Atari. But Oculus goggles in VR is pretty cool. You feel like you’re there.”
Z: “What’s your favorite tech?”
P: “Crypto.”
Z: “What do you do for a workout?”
P: “Honestly, I do P90X. It requires very little space and they mix the work outs up so you don’t get bored. I love the Kenpo Karate. Now I work with a trainer though.”
Z: “Your arms are looking pretty big bro, got any tips on beefing up biceps?”
P: “Ha! Ha! No, I actually have to tell my trainer to tone it down. Honestly, it’s all genetics. I have 'guido' arms. I have those Italian American arms and like, I have to be careful not to work out my biceps too much because if I wear a button up shirt they puff up and fill out the shirt. It’s just genetics, I don’t have to work them out.” He shrugs nonchalantly.
B: “Who is your celeb look alike?”
Now this cracks both of us up. Peter literally buries his face in his hands, and for the first time during this interview, I see the shy kid he was talking about in high school. When he looks up, he’s literally blushing and so flustered he can’t speak.
P: “I don’t know man, I used to get Tom Cruise. Who do you think?”
Z: “Ethan Hawk.”
P: “I’ll take it.”
Z: “What do you think, Becca?”
B: “I don’t think you look like anyone. I think you have a very unique look.”
P: “I like that better!”
With that, the interview is over. The weather has shifted and true to its reputation, Forks is the wettest place in America. The temperature drops. Cold rain dumps on us. Two hours of friendly conversation has made us all cold ones and fast friends. Bec and I jump in the car, crank the heater, and wonder how exactly three Italians ended up on the farthest western point of North America. But that’s the beauty of Twilight.
To Peter’s point Twilight brings people together from all parts of the world and they make connections they otherwise wouldn’t have. This happens in book lines. Movie lines. FTF lines. It’s the spirit of Twilight that Peter helped build. And twelve years later the bonds are still being forged. Even with fans and actors. Thanks, Peter, for the interview and thanks to Stephenie Meyer for an awesome love story!
