Mere"'
Gets A

acob Soberman and
4 Max Milgrom are
buried side by side in
the Workmen's Circle
cemetery off Gratiot
Avenue.
They stuck togeth-
er in life, too.
Devout Jews who
came to the United
States from the Polish
town of Ozarow in
1913, the men were
like two sides of a coin
— different faces, same des-
tiny. With a pot and a brush
in hand, the partners built
a small dynasty.
Jacob and Max raised
their families together, oc-
cupying different floors of
this or that apartment build-
ing in Detroit — wherever
the Jews were. And their
competence as painters
steadily grew.
In 1919, Jacob and Max
began building a wall cov-
ering business at a location on
West Warren. By 1921, they be-
gan selling paint at a location on
Hastings and Alfred streets as
the Soberman & Milgrom Paint
Co.
Four years later, the partners
moved their business to 12th
Street.
After Max succumbed to tu-
berculosis in 1933 at the age of
39, the families used the money
from his insurance policy, rein-
vested it in the business, and be-

Max Milgrom
and Jacob Soberman,
founders of Mercury
Paint Co., in 1918.

PHOTO BY GLENN TR IEST

Company. Mercury Paint

Louis Milgrom of Soberman and Soberman, Nate Milgrom, Chuck Milgrom, Paula

Myron L.

The local paint
giant sells out to
behemoth Sherwin
Williams, ending a
reign that spanned
nearly a century.

JULIE EDGAR STAFF WRITER

gan making paint.
Jacob and the widowed Fan-
nie Milgrom ran the business un-
til Jacob's son Nate came on
board, after World War II. She
later remarried a cousin.
The family passion for paint
caught fire with the Soberman-
Milgrom children and grand-
children, who helped make what
became the Mercury Paint Co.
the largest regional paint maker
in the state. Mercury captured
about 25 percent of the commer-

cial paint market, with sales of
over 1 million gallons a year. The
company was ranked in the 100
largest paint companies in the
United States this year in Paint
& Coatings Industry magazine.
If the world didn't turn, Mer-
cury might have lasted through
the century. Alas, in June, the
company became a casualty of
the marketplace's growing in-
tolerance of mid-sized business-
es. Cleveland-based Sherwin
Williams, the nation's largest
paint company, made an offer
the families could not refuse. As
Nate Soberman puts it, the sale
was inevitable.
In the '40s and '50s, about
2,500 paint companies were in
business. Today the number is
around 500, says Jacob's grand-
son Charles Soberman, compa-
ny president.
In the face of competition from
places like Home Depot and HQ,
which added 1 million square feet
of home improvement goods in
the Detroit area — including
paint — Mercury couldn't hold
onto the "handyman," the indi-
vidual customer it once served,
Charles explains.
"I'm not sad, maybe nostalgic.
It's too tough to be a small busi-
ness today," says his father, 74-
year-old Nate. He has gone into
semiretirement.
"I'm pleased by the sale," said

74-year-old Louis Milgrom,
Max's oldest son, who
served as the company's
chemist and manufactur-
ing director until about 10
years ago. "There's so
much of this going on now,
with small companies be-
ing bought up. Small busi-
nesses become very
difficult to run with gov-
ernment regulations and
economic conditions."
"I take it more to heart.
I don't like being dis-
placed," said Louis' broth-
er Myron L. Milgrom, 68,
who headed Mercury's
sales division for years and
continues to manage the
company's properties.
The three men have left
the day-to-day workings of
the company to Charles and
to Myron's daughter, Paula.
Although the two consider
themselves cousins, they
are unrelated by blood.
"Our joke was, blood is thick-
er than water, but paint is thick-
er than blood," says Paula,
executive vice president of Mer-
cury.
When they both came on board
in the late 1970s, Mercury Paint
boasted four area stores. Today
there are 12, including one in
Flint and the rest in the metro
area. Despite revenues that have
hovered in the $16-million range
for the past three years, the com-
pany was about to open a 13th
branch in Canton when Sherwin
Williams called.
Although Mercury stopped
making paint last week, the corn-
pany will remain a "district" of
Sherwin Williams, retaining its
name and hopefully its identity,
even after Charles and Paula
clear out.
In its 77 years, the company
made a distinct mark in the an-
nals of commercial paint histo-
ry.
In 1949, Louis, who also joined
the business after the war, de-
veloped a flat wall paint — "cus-
tom flat" — that revolutionized
house painting.
"It had characteristics painters
needed desperately those days.
It was foolproof. It eliminated
practically all the worries
painters had about how it would
look the next day. The appear-

MERCURY page 50

