Our Story

APaintCrew was founded by Marcus Delray, a painting industry veteran with over 20 years of experience running painting crews across the Southeast. Marcus started his career as a journeyman painter at 19, worked his way up to foreman, and eventually launched his own painting company in Atlanta in 2005.

Over two decades in the business, Marcus watched the industry struggle with a fundamental disconnect: homeowners had no reliable way to find trustworthy painters, and skilled painters had no reliable way to find steady, quality work. Word of mouth worked — but only up to a point. Marketing was expensive and unpredictable. Aggregator sites that promised leads often delivered tire-kickers or sent the same lead to dozens of painters, making it nearly impossible to close business at a profitable rate.

In 2022, Marcus sold his painting company and spent a year talking to hundreds of painters and homeowners across the country. He heard the same frustrations everywhere — from solo painters in rural Montana to large painting contractors in Chicago. The problem was not that good painters did not exist, and it was not that homeowners were unwilling to pay for quality work. The problem was that there was no efficient, trustworthy way to connect them.

APaintCrew was built to solve that problem. We launched in 2023 with a simple mission: create the most reliable, transparent, and painter-friendly marketplace in America. We wanted to build something that a painter would actually want to use — not another lead aggregator that treats contractors as a revenue source rather than a partner.