FAQ - bio on Gary

Gary, How did you get into this?

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I get asked all the time how I ever got into Face Painting and SNAZAROO. I figured, I would write up a FAQ biography on how I got involved. If I took the time to write this up I could refer to it rather than telling the story over and over. So here is a relatively quick bio on my professional life or my evolution to face paints. It really was something that evolved, rather than strategically planned.

I was born in New Mexico, lived one year in Arizona and moved to Texas when I was about ten. I was raised by two great parents in a very modest income family. Since there was no money for college, I moved away from home when I was 18 and worked two years at a paint factory. I jumped from there to working for Mary Kay Cosmetics making cosmetics for a whopping $2.90 per hour. I worked over thirteen years for Mary Kay. They had a college tuition program where they would pay for your schooling if you made an A or a B. So I went to school at nights forever, working on my Computer Science degree. During that period I left for two years to serve as a missionary in the state of Nevada for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. Mary Kay was a good opportunity for me. I learned a lot about cosmetics and the ingredients in cosmetics and got promoted five times during my tenure. I worked for them during a period of great growth in the company. Because of their hire-from-within policy I had lots of opportunity. I got promoted a lot not necessarily because I was an over achiever but often I was in the right place at the right time. I learned lots of manufacturing skills from scheduling, to inventory control to purchasing. I finished up at Mary Kay, the last 5+ years, in the job I aspired to and that was purchasing.

I enjoyed the purchasing job but it did not take long to realize that the money was on the other side of the desk. The salesmen were the ones making the money. I made the leap, left Mary Kay and changed my carrier path to sales. Over the next ten to fifteen years I worked for two organizations that provided lots of personal growth opportunity. During that time I traveled extensively all over the Pacific Rim sourcing goods to sell to the cream of crop in the cosmetic industry from Revlon to BeautiControl. During this period, I ran two companies and had the opportunity to hone my marketing and managerial skills.

SNAZAROO in the United Kingdom in the mid-ninety's was wanting to expand their sales into North America. Paul Staton the owner, and one of the original founders (with his wife Lauren) approached the company I was working for at the time and asked that we do the marketing and sales for SNAZAROO in North America. I was the Vice-President of Sales and Marketing. At that time, we were selling the artist brushes to SNAZAROO in the UK. I went to Minehead and visited the factory and met with the key employees. Where we saw the potential of the product, we really were not interested in doing the sales and marketing as it would dilute our current efforts. They upped the offer, saying that we could buy the exclusive rights to manufacturing, sales and distributions in a partnership. Even then, I knew SNAZAROO would be a big hit in the USA if marketed properly.

It started out with Paul owning ten percent and then four U.S. partners (including me) each owning twenty-two and a half percent. Several years later, after Paul's untimely death, lots of changes were happening in the UK. About that time there was a reorganization where the ownership changed from the current situation, to two UK partners and myself. Then in March of 2000 I bought out all of the partners and owned exclusively, the manufacturing, sales and distribution rights to Canada, the United States, Mexico and the Caribbean. Since that time SNAZAROO in the United Kingdom has changed ownership two times and I retained the rights to sales in North America. This is where this stands today. SNAZAROO UK is still the world headquarters but I operate independently in the USA for my territory.

As marketing the product in the United States started off, it wasn't easy. I clearly recall, when we made sales calls they would simply say, "call me back when I'm doing my Halloween purchases", and then they would hang up on us. No one in the United States was painting full faces except at Halloween. There was some face painting going on, but the majority of people were using acrylic or tempra paints and it was all cheek art. We did a tremendous amount of marketing and literally introduced the European full-face, face painting to the North American. We also had the battle to educate the public about safety issues and face paints. With a lot of work, an excellent product and a bit of good luck, SNAZAROO in North America took hold. The world headquarters is still in the United Kingdom. SNAZAROO USA Inc. is an independent sub-set (due the lack of a better term) of the SNAZAROO UK office. SNAZAROO in the United Kingdom is currently owned by the parent company ColArt. ColArt's sales emphasis is in the art/craft sector and they own sister companies like Liquitex, Windsor Newton and Reeves Art. There are similar independent SNAZAROO companies in various countries like France and United Arab Emirates.

In the back ground, around 1996 I got tired of spending my weekends doing product demos at retail stores doing face painting. I trained a couple of high school students how to face paint to take over this task. They started getting lots of requests for private parties to face paint. We were charging at the time $40 per hour and a light went off in my head understanding the potential. We were getting a lot of bookings with very little effort. I decided at that time to incorporate a new company to separate the product side of the business with the service side of face painting. Party Faces Inc. was formed. I put money into marketing and this business took off. See www.partyfaces.us

With my learned computer skills, and my marketing, in 1996 we did the programming for http://www.snazaroo.us . I was getting overwhelmed with the number of face painting questions directed to the site. Out of self preservation, I started the discussion list for face painters, so that face painters could go to each other to ask face painting questions. This evolved into the photo pages and then the photo contests, then the FAQ (frequently asked questions) section. The SNAZAROO web site, thanks to all of those that contribute, has become THE site for face painters from all over the world. No other site or discussion list can come to offering such a great AND FREE service to the face painting community. The discussion list and photo pages have international members from all over the world and literally every state in the USA. There are now literally thousands of photos posted (well over 7000 last count). There is no site on the internet that has such a good resource for face painters to learn, grow and improve not only their face painting skills but also their marketing and business skills. This is attributed to the hundreds of people involved from all over the world. The group that participates are always willing to help, encourage and teach others. It is a great group. It is amazing the draw this site has to the internet. On the face painters discussion list there are WELL OVER 2300 members. On the photos pages there are now thousands and thousands of photos available to help new face painters get ideas. We receive over 8,000,000 hits per month on the site and in October (for obvious reasons) well over 24,000,000 hits. That is fabulous for such a unique niche. This continues to grow each year as the internet and face painting grows.

As part of marketing SNAZAROO USA Inc. offers free training for face painters (see www.snazaroo.us/lecture.htm ) and through this I have arguably trained more beginner face painters than anyone in the world. Each year I travel from Hawaii to England teaching classes to thousands of people each year.

On a fun note I have competed in several Guinness World record attempts for speed face painting. Most recently in September of 2007 I traveled to Livingston, Scotland in the United Kingdom and handily broke the previous speed painting record. The previous record was 130 full faces (three colors, recognizable and different) and I came out at that event painting a speedy 217 faces. To put this into perspective a regular professional face painter will typically paint a full face about every three to five minutes. At this event I averaged a full face every 16.6 seconds beating the previous speed of 27.7 seconds. This event was held at a large shopping mall in the area. To date, this record has not been beat. Several groups have attempted but none have even come close.

Each year I travel all over Canada, the United States and Mexico teaching people how to face paint. Each year I personally have teach close to 3000 people the basics of face painting. These classes are taught as marketing and a free service to the face painting world. Read more about this at www.snazaroo.us/lecture.htm to see how you can get me to come and teach classes in your area for free. I have literally taught thousands of people how to paint those great three to five minute full face designs. It is easy to learn and fun to do. I do training at a broad range of venues from clown conventions to training staffing at large amusement parks like The Shedd Aquarium (Chicago), the Polynesian Cultural Center (Hawaii), Sea World in (San Diego) and California Disney in (Anaheim).

So there you have it. Evolution from making house paint to face paint. The future offers all kinds of opportunities. If you would have told me I would make my living off face paints thirteen years ago I would have laughed at you. Now, I am in an unusual niche market, with a fun, artistic product. I still occasionally get out and face paint myself because it is a venue for my artistic skills and there is great satisfaction in holding up that mirror and letting the child look at their painted face in the mirror. The huge smile is the reward. In addition I routinely travel all over the hemisphere teaching classes to beginners on how to do fast and great three to five minute faces. I also teach them how to build their own successful face painting business (see http://www.snazaroo.us/lecture.htm ).

I live in Flower Mound a community of about 70,000 about 20 miles north-west of Dallas. I live with my wife of thirty years and six children ages 11 to 27 (the two oldest are girls followed by four boys). I enjoy painting, woodcarving, running marathons and doing activities with my family and my church.

Keep painting!!! And see you in the face painting photo contests!

Gary Cole
President of SNAZAROO USA Inc. & Party Faces Inc. garycole@mindspring.com

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