The story behind the name
A .SHAK (PTY) LTD was established in 1958 to supply release agents to the construction Industry and evolved over the years to add a range of DIY products to the existing industrial brands and so entered the Hardware Retail market which has become a major part of our business.
As we are always looking for avenues to grow our business, we explored the Craft and Chalk Paint market as they are closely affiliated with other products which we already manufactured. As our paint was not going to be a true “chalk paint” we decided to rather call it a décor paint as we believe it is of better quality and less polarizing of the market we wished to target.
Once we had established our paint formulation and were happy with the quality, we had to find a name for our brand as well as design the packaging and logo. Our design team were discussing this when I told the story of my horse CAMEO who had recently passed. Pauline immediately said “that’s the perfect name!”
CAMEO was a rescue horse who had been badly neglected due to ignorance by her owners. Our vet had asked me to take her on because she suffered from a chronic hoof condition called Laminitis. The untreated Laminitis had resulted in both of her front hooves being full of abscess and infection and the soles of her hooves were completely nonexistent. She could not stand for more than a few minutes at a time before lying down to take her weight off her extremely painful hooves. I had successfully dealt with this condition in the past with a previous pony of mine and knew that it would take months of special care and knowledge of her condition to get her back to living a somewhat normal life. CAMEO lived happily with us for 16 years before her laminitis became too advanced and we had to make the humane decision to let her go.
Naming our new paint brand after this courageous and noble horse will keep her memory alive and remind me of just how privileged I was to have been a part of her life.
