Bulk Underground's Austin and Cole Brantley on Saving Contractors Time, Content and Earning Trust

Austin was doing marketing for blue collar businesses when he noticed a problem nobody seemed to talk about. His clients were making good money, but they kept showing up late.

“I’m like, yo, you didn’t show up to this job on time. Like, what’s going on?” he says. “He’s like, I have to go to Home Depot.”

A contractor heading to a 9 a.m. job stops at the store, crosses the parking lot, finds the aisle, waits in line. An hour is gone. “If you just aggregate that across all the contractors of America, that is a lot of wasted energy,” Austin says.

That idea became Bulk Underground, a supply company he started with his friend Cole Brantley.

Why buy singles?

The premise is simple. If you are in business and plan to stay in business, you should not be buying one roller at a time.

“Why are we buying singles? Like single rollers, single brushes,” Austin says. “You shouldn’t be buying singles of anything.”

The name has a story too. Bulk is the quantity. Underground is a prohibition era joke: supplies so good they should be illegal.

They grew it the hard way. Austin says the team has made 15,000 phone calls, calling every business they could find.

Bulk does not mean cheap

Asked where installers can save money without cutting quality, Austin says the answer is the whole business model.

“Bulk doesn’t mean cheap. Bulk means a high quantity,” he says. Contractors should save store trips for things that need a pickup truck, like chemicals, plywood and cement, and stop driving a diesel truck to the store for rollers and brushes.

He also thinks many contractors are watching the wrong numbers. “A lot of people do care about the pennies and the nickels and dimes,” he says. “What we notice in the winning contractors is they focus on the dollars and the checks, those big checks they get from closing another job.”

How they earned contractors’ trust

Contractors are a tough group to sell to. Cole says one thing made the biggest difference: free sample packs, sent out by the thousands.

“There’s people still every day that say, the reason we did business with you is because you sent us free stuff to try,” he says.

Austin adds personal follow up, and plenty of it. “You call these people, you talk to these people, you follow up with them relentlessly,” he says. Some people do not like that, he admits. “That’s the one percent of people that don’t fit our style, and that’s okay.”

The feedback loop matters too. Cole says they ask for feedback whether a product goes well or badly, and use it to shape the next product line.

People buy from people

Both founders put content at the center of the business. Cole calls a social media profile “someone’s business card nowadays.” Bulk Underground does not even hand out paper ones.

Austin’s message for business owners is blunt.

“If I could yell from the rafters and everyone in the world heard that’s a business owner in 2026, I would say stop automating the parts of your business that make you stand out,” he says. “Because you’re going to lose to the guy that isn’t automating that thing.”

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“Stop automating the parts of your business that make you stand out.”

The marketing staircase

For installers, Austin describes marketing as a staircase you climb one step at a time.

First, take out your phone and make free, organic content. You will struggle a little, find out what works and improve your craft. Then put your own ad dollars behind what works. Then, once you know your numbers, a marketing firm can help bring the cost per lead down and help with your website and branding.

“You don’t jump to the top of the staircase,” he says. “You start at stair one and you just make the logical stair step up.”

He has a warning about starting too high. If an agency wants 30 to 40 percent of your ad spend as its fee, he says, you are probably too early to run a lot of paid ads with a firm.

Cole adds a common mistake he sees. Contractors run one or two ads, then stop posting. Months later, a homeowner who saw that first ad finally has the money for a floor, but the contractor has gone quiet.

“They position themselves right at the start, but they didn’t seem to follow through with that and therefore they’re not landing the job,” Cole says.

“They created a client for someone else to get,” Austin adds.

Advice for new installers

Cole sees many people try to start a coatings business with a one or two day class and no real job site experience. His advice is to make your mistakes somewhere safe first.

“Start on your family’s garage or your personal garage or go somewhere that you can make the mistakes that you would need to make in order to be a good operator,” he says.

Austin’s advice is more surprising. If you are new and you close a job, ask an experienced competitor in your area to work it with you, paid or not.

“A thousand bucks to learn from a vetted installer that has years and years of experience is very, very cheap,” he says. A class can teach tips and tricks, but a local installer knows the concrete, the humidity and the products that work in your area. “There are good people in this world and they do want to see you win.”

Advice for homeowners

Austin’s view of trust applies to homeowners choosing an installer, too. The cheapest bid is rarely the best one.

“People want to shop with people that they’re confident in, whether that be us as a supplier or a homeowner with an installer,” he says. A professional crew, a clear follow up process and a warranty are worth more than a low number.

Customers who know more

Bulk Underground says it wants to stay out of the coatings chemical business, which Austin says many companies already do well. The goal is to carry everything else a contractor needs.

And they want customers who understand the business as well as they do.

“Most businesses thrive on their consumers knowing less,” Austin says. “We want to thrive on our consumers knowing more.”

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“Most businesses thrive on their consumers knowing less. We want to thrive on our consumers knowing more.”

He has a reason for caring about that. He sees contractors as the people who build the hospitals, data centers and buildings everyone depends on.

“The people that can make a difference are the blue collar men and women of America,” he says. “So we wanna give them the tools they need to be successful.”