Good Neighbor Podcast Northport
Bringing Together Local Businesses and Neighbors of Tuscaloosa and Northport!
Good Neighbor Podcast Northport
Sonny Blaising: Transforming Home Projects and Strengthening Community with Cottage Supply in Tuscaloosa and Birmingham
Discover the transformative journey of Sonny Blaising, the visionary behind Cottage Supply, as he takes us from his beginnings at Benjamin Moore to the dynamic world of home projects in Tuscaloosa and Birmingham. Sonny didn't just buy Cabiness Paint; he reimagined it, turning a simple paint store into a vibrant, one-stop hub for everything from flooring to cabinetry. With a focus on realistic expectations and savvy project management, Sonny also pulls back the curtain on his personal life, sharing his love for fishing, family, and his deep-rooted ties to the local church community.
We shine a spotlight on the critical role local businesses play in enriching our neighborhoods. By featuring Cottage Supply, we celebrate the ripple effect of supporting small enterprises and encourage listeners to champion their local favorites. This episode is a testament to the power of community engagement and how businesses like Cottage Supply are the heartbeat of connected neighborhoods. Whether you're planning a home renovation or simply passionate about community support, Sonny's story offers both inspiration and insight.
#gnpbirmingham #CottageSupply #SupportLocal #SmallBusinessLove #CommunityBuilders #HomeRenovation #LocalBusinesses #BirminghamAL #TuscaloosaAL #HomeProjects #ProjectManagement #ShopLocal #BenjaminMoore #HomeImprovement #FlooringAndCabinetry #PaintStore #LocalImpact #EntrepreneurStory #CommunityConnection #NeighborhoodPride #LocalLeaders #FamilyAndFaith #RenovationInspiration #CommunitySupport #ShopSmall
This is the Good Neighbor Podcast, the place where local businesses and neighbors come together. Here's your host, Patricia Blondheim.
Speaker 2:Welcome to the Good Neighbor Podcast. I'm your host, patricia Blondheim, and today we have good neighbor Sonny Blazing, and Sonny is the owner of Cottage Supply in Tuscaloosa and in Birmingham. Sonny, how are you today?
Speaker 3:I'm doing very well. Thank you, glad to be here.
Speaker 2:I know all about Cottage Supply but for our listeners, please tell us all about the wonders. I love your story. Yeah, tell everyone about Counter Supply.
Speaker 3:Absolutely Well. We started about 22 years ago in Tuscaloosa. Primarily we were paint a paint store. Over the years, as we've grown and moved into Birmingham and made some acquisitions, we we began to really desire to build out a business that um would really be a one-stop shop for people that are doing uh projects in their home and uh. So over the years we've gone from paint to flooring, was next countertops, and then about four years ago, in the cabinetry side and then some other ancillary or surrounding products like window treatments and wallpaper, things like that as well. So you know there's five or six categories that I think are our primary categories.
Speaker 2:It went from a place where you could get you know, really good paint.
Speaker 3:Correct.
Speaker 2:And now it's a place where you can go in and you're really only limited by your imagination. What can you, what you can do inside it? You can be completely supported. And there are other places that you can go for kitchen and bathroom design. You can go to these other places, but the thing I love about cottage supply is that when I go in there, the people are extraordinary. So that's what I think makes you really uncommon, is that the people that you, it's yes, yeah, I think.
Speaker 3:I think it's. Our biggest asset are our people, whether it's designers that work inside the store, whether it's our guys at the paint counter, and then, with all the things that we do, we've got to have great support behind us that are in the warehouse receiving and then delivering materials. We are very blessed to have an incredible team of people here at Cottage Supply Company.
Speaker 2:It's kind of genius because all the contractors who are in the know use Cottage Supply for years, and so you got to know the best tradesmen in the business, and those are the tradesmen that you use inside of your projects. So it's genius. I'm looking at a genius right now. Sonny, good for you, great for your customers.
Speaker 3:Yes, Well, that's a stretch, but thank you Again.
Speaker 2:All the credit really goes to the great team of people that we've assembled. Well, tell our listeners about your journey, Sonny.
Speaker 3:How did you end up here, man? That's a great question. Many years ago I actually worked for Benjamin Moore, the paint manufacturer, in a marketing and sales role with them and one of my customers was Cabinus Paint, which is a very well-known name in the Tuscaloosa market, and they had been there for a long time and built a wonderful business and they were one of my customers and I had a kind of a window where I was given an opportunity to kind of transition to another career and in about a two-week window of making the decision to do that, the cabinists approached me and said that they were ready to retire and did I know anybody that would want to buy their business? And that's really where it all began. I just decided that it was something I would love to do and would enjoy doing, and that's how it started, really almost 22 years ago now.
Speaker 2:Now it begins with changing the color of your paint and it ends up being a whole redesign project. You know, you can't change your paint without realizing that you need to change your cabinets, and maybe your sink doesn't look so good. It's just all. It's just a big snowball. So? But a lot of people go into this with with misconceptions. You know about what it's going to take in order to accomplish this. Do you run across any of those? Is that a silly question?
Speaker 3:We run across it all the time. I think it's one of the great values again back to our people and the experience that we have now, after many, many years, to be able to try to set realistic expectations for people. We live in a world, obviously, where we have the internet. We have TV shows that are wonderful but don't often paint an accurate picture of what a project really entails, and so we stress to our team to really listen and then, beyond that, to try to set realistic expectations with our customers so that they kind of know what's happening and where we're going.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's very involved. It can be really confusing. That kind of thing kind of fires up, you know, whatever part of our brain is responsible for fear comes alive at that point. But you've got, you know. It becomes a huge strain on people. But I think that can be alleviated through something that you practice, which is great project management. And great project management means communication. That's really what it means.
Speaker 3:Hundred percent.
Speaker 2:Now, what do you? What do you do for fun, sonny, when you're not, when you're not working?
Speaker 3:Wow, I, I, I love to fish. I get to go up to Smith Lake periodically and get out and fish a little bit. At one time I enjoyed playing golf, but I don't tend to have as much time to do that anymore. And then I've got five grandkids and six on the way. So you know, today being Halloween, we'll be spending the afternoon dressed up as some crazy creature I'm sure that my wife has picked. So you know, the grandkids take up a good part of our time, and so that's what, some of the things. And I would back up and say too, I'm really involved in my local church, been there for really most of my life, and in the community that I grew up and you know. So we're really plugged in there and have great relationships in our community. We live in Hoover Bluff Park, and so I make the trip down to Tuscaloosa, you know, several times a month and just kind of go back and forth.
Speaker 2:Sonny, does Cottage Supply have any community initiatives that they work on?
Speaker 3:any community initiatives that they work on. We have been very blessed over the years to be involved with several nonprofits in different categories. One is an organization called World Reach. They've been around for many, many years and we regularly sponsor their annual golf tournament and they both have orphanages in Kenya, medical clinics in that part of the world as well. In addition to that, we have built a relationship actually with some customers of ours that run an organization called Sozo, which is also an orphanage that they have built in Uganda. And then, lastly, local to Birmingham, we were introduced to a group called Empower. They focus on helping people in the community develop skill sets whether it's carpentry or welding or painting or whatever it is and try to help them learn a skill that they can get into the workforce and just be productive and earn an income. So those are three that come to mind, you know, probably at the forefront.
Speaker 2:What's one thing, sonny, you would like our listeners to take away about, cottage Supply Company, to take away about?
Speaker 3:Cottage Supply Company. I think it would be the broadness of what we do. You know we have people come into our stores very often and they say, man, we had no idea that you guys do all these different things. And you know that you have designers here that can help us put it all together and that we have project managers that can, you know, tackle the project. So I think that's that's the the biggest thing. You know, because people paint, you know there may be years between a paint project right, and by the time they come back we've added a new segment or something different, and so that's probably the biggest thing, just the diversity of what we do.
Speaker 2:Well, for our listeners who are interested in being involved in their community and supporting small business, but most of all, really getting involved in a place that gives them access to great product and great tradesmen and great support, how can they get a hold of Cottage Supply?
Speaker 3:Well, there would be several ways. There would be several ways. Obviously, an easy way is our website, which is cottagesupplycompanycom, and on the website are the listings of all the different stores and locations phone numbers, hours of operation, things like that but they're also on. There are links to Instagram. We do a lot of social media. We show a lot of before and after type projects. We have content on there about our people, pictures of the inside of our store, and we built a pretty big library over many years, so people can kind of see the type of work we do, the quality of work we do and meet some of our people as well.
Speaker 2:Exactly, and your website is great, but it doesn't substitute for walking in and just getting to know the really friendly folks there at cottage supply. They'll support you every step of the way. Sonny, thank you so much for coming by and sharing cottage supply with us. Thanks for coming by. The good neighbor podcast.
Speaker 3:Thanks for having us.
Speaker 1:Thank you for listening to the good neighbor podcast. To nominate your favorite local businesses to be featured on the show, go to gnpbirminghamcom. That's gnpbirminghamcom, or call 205-952-0148. Thank you.