Success May Be Written on the Wall : WI Corp. to Market Graffiti Remover
Graffiti? What graffiti?
WI Corp. hopes that question will be posed across Orange County if its current graffiti-eradication product catches on with private property owners.
The anti-graffiti solution, Graf-Gone 1, has been used exclusively by the Irvine-based, graffiti-removal company, which considers its product to be one of the most effective and environmentally safe chemical solutions on the market.
And now the company wants to sell it directly to the public.
“It’s a pretty remarkable product,” said Michael J. Quinn, vice president of sales and marketing, about the biodegradable paint-removing chemical.
Quinn said the 3-year-old exterior maintenance company, formerly called Weatherman Industries, was formed to tap into the lucrative business of graffiti removal.
Virtually every city in the county has some form of graffiti-removal program to deal with the ubiquitous wall scribblings that seem to plague every community. Municipalities either eradicate the graffiti themselves or hire a private firm to do it.
For such businesses as WI Corp., which posted $250,000 in sales last year, that means an almost recession-proof business.
Gary Griffin, a spokesman for the city of Dana Point, said WI Corp. is called in as necessary when city property “is vandalized” by graffiti.
“We do not have any (maintenance) forces of our own,” Griffin said. “We depend on contractors.”
Even the most affluent Orange County cities are not immune to graffiti, be it the almost unintelligible and often profane scrawling of gang members or the more artistic renderings of outlaw “taggers.”
“These days it really crosses all income levels,” Griffin said. “And I don’t think you can really classify it as a problem for only lower-income communities--it’s across the board.”
Newport Beach general services director Dave Niederhaus said the amount of graffiti in the city often increases on the weekends when the sun is out and the coastal community draws tourists by the thousands.
On a good day, as many at 150,000 out-of-towners crowd into Newport Beach to soak up rays and cruise the local watering holes. Some, unfortunately, come to leave their almost indelible mark.
“We try to get (graffiti) off in a 24-hour period,” said Niederhaus, whose city has hired WI Corp. to eradicate the markers’ mischief on walls in the city. “The quicker you get it off, the better.”
WI Corp. also has graffiti-removal contracts with the cities of Irvine, Huntington Beach, Tustin, Mission Viejo and Garden Grove, as well as a local contract with Caltrans, Quinn said.
During the last three years, the company has tested the performance of Graf-Gone 1 while it performed its city and state contracts.
The results were impressive enough, Quinn said, that the company now is ready to publicly market the product, which is manufactured by Pomona-based Kahan Manufacturing Inc. The solution will be sold in five-gallon cans and 55-gallon drums.
An exact retail price for the solution has not been determined, but a five-gallon can will run about $100, Quinn said. Five gallons can clean about 2,500 square feet.
The solution will be sold only through WI Corp., Quinn said. The company may later consider supplying the chemical to retail stores, depending on its success.
The solution, Quinn estimated, could boost the company’s sales to $1 million a year and its profit margin by 25%. Already, samples of the solution have been shipped to municipalities around the nation, including Dallas, Milwaukee and Detroit, although no sales have resulted.
Quinn said the major selling point is that Graf-Gone 1, which is a detergent, does not cover up graffiti but dissolves it. It is applied to graffiti-stained walls and then washed off with hot water from high-pressure hoses. The suds that pour off the wall are nontoxic, he said.
The technique, Quinn said, is superior to paint-over methods or sandblasting, which can destroy the finish on a wall.
The more traditional methods can leave ugly scars, actually exacerbating the graffiti problem.
The detergent process is not new, though the chemical may be, according to others in the industry. There are as many as 50 different chemicals on the market--with varying degrees of success and toxicity--that can be sprayed on walls to remove graffiti.
Mike Sullivan, vice president of Los Angeles-based Graffiti Removal Inc., the first such company formed in Southern California, said he had never heard of either WI Corp. or Graf-Gone 1.
“These chemicals don’t come cheap,” Sullivan said. “I find (the reported effectiveness) kind of hard to believe.”
Dan Crane, manager of Kreiger Sales and Service in the City of Commerce, which specializes in graffiti-removal products and equipment, said he knows of “no magic formula, no magic cure-all” for graffiti removal.
“There are so many parameters to consider,” he said. Nevertheless, he is interested in studying the Graf-Gone 1 formula and would consider purchasing and distributing it.
“I want to find out about this more, so that I can put it into our arsenal of products,” Crane said.
Though WI Corp.’s competitors may be lukewarm to its product, the company’s clients say they are sold on its effectiveness.
In Garden Grove, for instance, WI Corp. was awarded the contract over another graffiti-removal firm because of its method of erasing the paint rather than painting over it, said city spokesman David Edgar.
“They have done a very good job” of getting rid of graffiti in the city’s troubled Buena Clinton neighborhood, where graffiti painters have been rampant, Edgar said. The city has increased the company’s contract to include cleanup of a second neighborhood.
“We’re sufficiently impressed by them,” he said.
