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Vida Luo | Director of Business Development | G. P. Coatings NSW

Vida Luo: Staunch Leader Portraying Iconic Success

No matter how good the construction is, a bad render and paint job can leave the place looking undesirable. It is said that colors have a psychological link to emotions, and a good finish can not only uplift the whole construction but also the mood of the people occupying it.

Livening up spaces and people is G P Coatings® NSW, a prominent company in delivering high-end painting, rendering and textured finishes for projects across a wide range of sectors both public and private. Leading general contractors have enlisted the company to be the painting and rendering subcontractor for well-known historical landmarks, defence assets, large-scale residential projects, hospitals, just to name a few.

Vida Luo, its Director of Business Development, ensures the continuous rise of G P Coatings. As the “business brain” and leader of both the sales and marketing teams, Vida has played a critical role in positioning G P Coatings as a leader in the marketplace, turning new opportunities into sales revenue with confidence and precision. She has long been passionate about business development and brand-building, and she gets the chance to fulfill both at G P Coatings.

Since Vida joined the company in 2011, she has been relentlessly striving to strengthen and deliver G P Coatings’ mission and vision – to deliver innovation through design in the painting and rendering world. Vida is passionate about using the latest technology to ensure the best results for her clients, collaborating closely with fellow staff and applicators to uphold the company’s legacy of greatness.

She firmly believes in maintaining the cutting edge in the industry is by keeping a finger on its pulse. She is constantly gathering knowledge by learning from leading industry experts and her fellow entrepreneurs. This insatiable hunger for knowledge is the driving force behind every achievement she’s made in the past including her being named the ‘2021 Top 100 Women in Construction.’

This entrepreneur, wife, and mother of two can be found indulging in self-improvement when she is not burning the midnight oil-from working out to reading, traveling, watching movies, and exploring healthy lifestyle opportunities.

In an exclusive interview with Insights Success, Vida Luo shares a tale of passion leading to perpetual success.

Vida, enlighten our readers about G P Coatings® NSW, its services/solutions, and how they significantly enable enhancements in the commercial contracting sector.

G P Coatings has been serving New South Wales with premium, high-end painting and rendering services for the past 20 years. One thing about us is that we don’t believe in a one-size-fits-all service. Instead, our team of over 60 painting and rendering professionals enjoy working closely with our clients to ensure we understand their wants and needs in-depth. Once both we and our clients are on the same page, we work our magic to bring their visions to life.

We’ve partnered with hundreds of tier one and tier two general contractors throughout the NSW region on many high-profile projects, including Barangaroo Tower, Central Station, Hornsby Station, Royal Prince Alfred Hospital, and Royal North Shore Hospital, to name but a handful.

Our comprehensive services comprise everything from general painting to decoration, texture coatings, protective coatings, membrane coatings, and hygiene coatings.

We also offer anti-graffiti treatment, wall covering, lead-based paint removal, epoxy floor coatings, line marking, and acrylic rendering, cement rendering, etc.

But our services are intended to do more than making our client’s buildings spectacles to behold. It is also critical that we offer protection and fortification against unpredictable dangers. Take, for example, our rendering and intumescent coating services. Rendering is where we coat internal or external walls with a cement, acrylic, or Granosite mixture to waterproof the building’s walls.

And intumescent coating refers to the process of protecting load-bearing structures against fire. This helps to delay structural damage caused by fires while giving building occupants more time to evacuate buildings safely. Ultimately, when choosing G P Coatings, you can rest assured that no detail is left behind.

Tell us about your journey and shed light on your professional tenure as the Business Development Director of G P Coatings® NSW.

I’ve always been passionate about business development and brand-building. G P Coatings has been a dream-like job for me, as I get to fulfil both passions. Having worked at G P Coatings since 2011, I’ve led our incredible sales and marketing division with confidence, compassion, and a commitment to turning new opportunities into sales and long-term partnerships.

I first started at G P Coatings after graduating from the University of Macquarie with a master’s degree in Linguistics, coupled with a bachelor’s in Business. Since day one, it has been my belief that to continually grow G P Coatings, we need to stay on the pulse of our industry.

With that being said, I enjoy and find immense benefit in familiarizing myself with and testing out the latest technologies to supercharge our services and continue growing, evolving, and adapting for years to come.

What are the fundamentals that highlight G P Coatings® NSW’s position as the leading company in the commercial contracting sector?

From a professional sense, I feel that G P Coating’s years of experience and unmatched expertise are what enable us to stand apart from other painting and render contractors in New South Wales. But from a personal perspective, I believe that we bring so much more than that as a team. The clients and business professionals we work this are incredibly busy and depend on us as their contractors to achieve success and results.

So, to answer this question while sharing some inside scoop, I think our ability to truly understand our clients’ wishes and requirements – and then customize and curate a project plan that suits them – is where our true value lies. We don’t treat our clients as just another job opportunity; instead, we strive to unearth the personal desires behind their professional persona, tailoring our services accordingly.

Tell us more about the vision and mission of G P Coatings® NSW and shed light on the key aspects of its stronghold in the commercial contracting sector.

At G P Coatings, our mission always has been – and always will be – to provide our customers with exceptional workmanship, extraordinary services, and professional integrity. Our incredible team consistently strives to implement long-term working relationships with our clients, as we believe a powerful partnership has the ability to unlock untapped potential. We guarantee professionalism, timeliness, and complete customer care for each of the clients we work with.

Our vision is to be recognized as a preeminent painting & rendering contractor in Australia, pursuing excellence through dedication, experience, and passion. As this vision is slowly but surely becoming G P Coating’s reality, I think it’s important to remember our humble beginnings and be thankful for how far we’ve come.

It’s easy to get caught up in the awards and accolades G P Coatings has stacked up over the years. But in receiving praise, we’ve only spread praise to all of the incredible people that make up the company. Without our team’s commitment, dedication, and passion for painting, coating, rendering, and serving – we wouldn’t be anywhere close to where we are now.

What were the challenges that you had to surmount in the initially, and looking at the current industry scenario, what are the challenges now?

As with any business in its early stages, I think amassing an impressive portfolio is a struggle right out of the gate. Clients want to see what you can do before they hire you, but that can’t happen before you’ve done any work.

So, in relation to this, I think our biggest initial challenge was being able to convince our early clients that we can get the job done better than they thought possible. Once we had a few clients who were more than satisfied with our service, the next challenge was managing an influx of orders.

As a company, we’ve had to become highly adaptable and accommodating to changes in the industry, as well as the impact of the pandemic, while ensuring we do a pristine job no matter what difficulties are going on behind the curtain.

Again, I would like to give credit to each of our team members on an individual level. Without their understanding, input, and professionalism, making it past the early stages of being in business would have been a much bigger struggle.

In terms of the challenges that we deal with today, I think one thing we must stay steadfast in is our ability to adapt. New technologies present new possibilities. They help us become more efficient, offer higher-grade services, and have the ability to better streamline our workflow. The challenge within that is staying on the cutting edge and growing alongside the new technology we’re using, not in the opposite direction.

What would be your advice to the aspirants willing to venture into the commercial contracting sector?

I would say join G P Coating because you’d rather work with us than have us as your competition! Shameless brag aside, I think the best advice I could give aspiring painters and contractors is to lead with your heart and let your intuition guide your decisions.

You need to have a passion for this industry; otherwise, you’ll never see success. I say that because I believe our love for what we do is what comes across in the final product. So, to anyone looking to start or grow a business like ours, you better make sure this is what you want to do because only then will your business look after you.

Where do you envision G P Coatings® NSW eventually, and how do you plan to strengthen its operation and services to ensure you get the best results possible?

Year after year, we’ve grown from strength to strength. And if something is not broken, don’t go messing around trying to fix it!

Our plans for the future remain to be recognized as one of Australia’s most distinguished painting and rendering contractors. Once we achieve that, ask me this question again, and I’ll probably say THE WORLD. But at the moment, we will continue to provide exceptional service with respect and compassion for our clients to back it up.

I don’t feel that G P Coatings is fighting to push past the competition at this point in time. We’ve done the grunt work, and we’re grateful for how well our services have been responded to. Now, we’re laser-focused on maintaining our position as the go-to painting and rendering contracting service in New South Wales, and all of Australia.