From Graffiti to Metallic Floors: How El Patron Resin Brought Floor Art to Australia

At 15 and 16, Serio was out with spray cans, painting graffiti on trains. Then life happened. Jobs, responsibilities, and the art got put aside.

Years later, floors came into his life. He started learning about epoxy and playing with it, and the artist came back.

“I start to kind of increase like a little bit more artistic things in there,” he says. “Plus all the skills I’ve been learning on the way.”

The moment a floor became art, he says, was when he put more effect into it, and clients started to react with “a whoa.”

Bringing floor art to Australia

Metallic epoxy has existed for decades. But Serio says the artistic style, the kind that makes a floor stand out, is still fresh in Australia. He has been working to bring it there for nearly five years.

In the United States, he says, installers have been “smashing it” for twelve, fifteen, even seventeen years. In Australia, many clients, and even many tradespeople, do not know what a metallic floor is.

That creates a problem. People try to copy what they see, without knowing the products, without proper prep or design. “The big difference I think so is like the skills and know about the products more better,” he says.

Why he teaches his competition

As his skills grew, partly by learning from installers in the US and around the world, Serio realized that to grow his business he had to educate people. Clients, and also the installers who could become his competition.

He does not see them that way. “I don’t look at a competition, I look as a people that can grow my business,” he says. If the people he trains do good work, that is more publicity for floors like his. If they do bad work, the whole market gets stuck.

Demand helped too. “So many people was messaging me, they want to learn what I’m doing, they want to learn my installation, my prep,” he says.

The two mistakes he sees most

Ask Serio what beginners get wrong, and he answers in one word.

“Prep,” he says. “The prep is the base of your art.”

Grinding is what makes a good base. A good base coat makes a good design possible. “If you don’t spend time in your prep and you put the effect in there, you don’t want to be successful,” he says.

He follows up with students on their first two or three floors after a course until they get it right.

The second mistake surprises people, because he sees it even in installers with 20 years of experience: mixing ratios. Epoxy is a two part product. Get the ratio wrong, or forget part B, and the result is a floor that stays sticky.

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“The prep is the base of your art.”

For homeowners, Serio’s two points are the questions to ask any installer: how will you prepare the floor, and how do you make sure every mix is right?

The Factory of Legends

To keep quality consistent across crews, Serio built what he calls the Factory of Legends, the courses he runs around the world.

“I train the people to have the same standards,” he says. “They know exactly the same prep, exactly the same movement we do to have the concrete smooth and flat, the patching and the base coats.”

Because the graduates are connected, he can take on a job in Australia, Spain or the US and work with people trained the same way.

The work travels because people find it. “If you do a right job and you have a good marketing on the back, the people contact you,” he says. He has been contacted from Florida, Vietnam, Germany, Spain and Dubai.

Wanting to quit

Like most owners, Serio had moments when he wanted to stop. A floor that went wrong. A job where he measured badly or priced too low and worked for nothing.

He tells his students the truth about those early jobs. “In this first two, three jobs I’ve done it really cheap and it’s no profit and you’re working for free,” he says.

What kept him going was mindset. “Give it one chance more because that chance you give to yourself could be the change and could be the one it works,” he says.

A brand is like a child

Serio’s advice for anyone who wants to build a brand starts with honesty.

“Be honest with your brand,” he says. “I never been lying to the clients.”

He also tells students the truth about the money. He is critical of teachers who promise fast riches. “Money is coming, the money is made, but you have to be constant,” he says.

And he treats the brand like family. “I love my brand as my own kid,” he says. “I feed my brand with money. I feed my brand with love. I feed my brand with time.” If you do not put that effort in, he says, “your brand gonna die.”

Face to face at last

Serio was nominated at the Golden Pour Awards, and he saw it as proof his vision was becoming real.

What excited him most was meeting people in person after years of connecting online. “We can clap hands, we can hug, we can laugh, we can talk,” he says.

His closing advice is about being ready when the moment comes.

“One movement, one client, one chance can change your life,” he says. “And if you there in the right time, the right moment to catch that moment, you will be there.”