Wet Paint owner stocks her neighborhood with creative supplies
Kelly Westhoff
When Beth Bergman decided it was time to get a real job, she bought Wet Paint, an art supply store. She hadn't planned to buy the business; she hadn't even planned to work in retail.
Bergman had earned her bachelor's degree in studio arts and considered herself a painter. But she didn't know art could become a career. "I went to college before there were women in positions that equaled their education," she said. "By the time I graduated, there was a recession and you were just glad if all the people you knew weren't in Vietnam."
She accepted a job with Economics Laboratories in St. Paul; today that company is Ecolab. For eight years, she worked with the accounting department and sales for corporate accounts, but personal unrest was brewing. "I never intended to have a life in business," she said. "I saved myself a small bundle and left."
For two years she painted, volunteered and took odd jobs. Then, at about the same time that Bergman had decided she should go back to the working world, a friend from college urged her to take a part-time job in his art supply store.
"Retail wasn't what I'd had in mind," Bergman recalled. "Someone trained me in for half an hour and left. I'd never worked at a cash register before but it turned out to be kinda fun. Low and behold, I ended up buying the place. And here I am, 20 years later."
Since purchasing the store in 1983, Bergman has cemented Wet Paint's presence on Grand Avenue in St. Paul. The store has moved four times, and each time it has expanded. The original Wet Paint occupied 450 square feet and had one employee. The current store occupies 3,400 square feet, employs 15 and offers a dental plan.
With 20 years in the art supply business, does Bergman finally feel that she is using her college degree? "Yes. But I use my Latin from high school, too. I even use algebra. Education," she stressed, "is there to round you as a person, and life does that for you too."
Life as a small business owner has taught Bergman to never sit still. "That's the nature of retail, it's the nature of business, really, it's the nature of our culture," she explained. "You have to look over your shoulder because change is coming. If you're asleep at the wheel, you're gonna wake up stunned."
That willingness to change has meant stocking items she isn't always happy about. "There are consumer demands for items at certain price points and so we have to sell those things," she explained. "I try to offset mass consumer demand with unique items. Like things that only 12 people in the state would buy."
Bergman's formula seems successful, but she isn't ready to mass market her store and open branches in other locations. "I like it here at the quiet end of Grand. I like our relationship with the neighborhood and with Macalester. We function here in our community," she said.
"I'm an urban person," she continued. "A tremendous amount of my personal identity is in this business. And I don't feel like I have to sell every art supply to every person in Minnesota. I like the feel inside this store. It's personal. We know our customers, greet them and help them find things."
Helping the customer, Bergman said, is more than just a retail necessity. "If we don't help the customer, not only do we lose a customer, we lose that person from making art," she said.
And a life without art, ironically, is something Bergman is all too familiar with. For much of the past 20 years, she channeled so much energy into Wet Paint that her own art‹painting‹fell by the wayside. But last year a friend organized an art show of work by Wet Paint employees. Bergman had nothing new to contribute and realized she needed to get back to her own art. So she picked up a brush.
Now that she has made time for art again Bergman wonders how she ever did without it. Painting, she said, "is a chance to think about things I don't express in everyday life. It is meditative."
