by Matt Trulio

Drop the name "Mitchell Ray Tolan" in a group of performance-boat lovers and you'll draw blank stares. But say "Mitcher T" and the conversation will quickly turn to the top custom paint shops. Headquartered in a recreational area called Yankee Springs between Kalamazoo and Grand Rapids, Mich., Mitcher T Custom Painting is among the best-known graphics outfits in the business. Though the company does the majority of its work for Michigan-based Sunsation Powerboats, it also does paint work for Fountain dealer Shogren Performance Marine in Chicago, Black Thunder, Checkmate and others. That's quite a leap for Tolan, who entered Grand Valley State College in western Michigan as an accounting major. We caught up with the 47-year-old at his shop.

So how did Mitchell Tolan get to be Mitcher T?

That happened when I was a kid because of the way my name flowed. My middle name is Ray. So "Mitchell R. Tolan" became Mitcher T. And now nobody knows my real name.

You entered college as an accounting major. You left with a commercial art career. That's quite a transition.

I had been working my way through college painting motorcycles and street rods. In my senior year, I started to become really challenged about the direction my life was taking. I felt called to go into art. I told one of my counselors about it—I told him that I felt I had wasted my education, that what I was doing in accounting didn't make sense as a profession, and that I was doing pretty well financially with painting. He said I was lucky, that only 50 percent of the people in my major went on to become CPAs, but that my training in accounting would keep me from becoming one of those starving artists you see everywhere. He said, "You have the training, now go out and make a living at it."

Would you be as successful without your accounting background?

I think it would be much more difficult. We pay close attention to things like our credit rating, depreciation schedules, bookkeeping taxes and trying to spend a little less than we make. Starving artists are everywhere. I know so many people who are so talented, but they don't know how to manage their business lives. They'll spend hundreds of hours on a painting and charge 50 bucks for it. You can't make a living that way. One guy I went to high school with was a phenomenally talented artist. He even worked for Disney. But he couldn't make a living at it because he had no aptitude for business.

I feel that I am fair and that my ethics are all there in terms of treating people the way I want to be treated. That's why I like working with Sunsation so much. The people there are the same way. When you go to bed at night, you know you're not going to be treated unfairly.

Did you always have an aptitude for art?

Yeah, but I've never taken a formal art class. I took "craft" classes as a kid. But I could always draw. Even now, it's hard to believe I'm an artist.

Describe your relationship with Sunsation.

We've been together for about 10 years now. We're a vendor to Sunsation, like Mercury Racing or McLeod (bolsters). We operate independently, but it's more like a family. We grew up with the same kind of roots, though on different sides of Michigan. We started with nothing. Customer service is huge for our shop and it is huge for Sunsation.

Wayne Schaldenbrand (the Schaldenbrand family owns Sunsation) has said to me that the last thing he worries about is Mitcher T yanking his chain in the morning, and I feel the same way about them. Wayne and Joe (Schaldenbrand) are never going to undermine me. We're a team. Money is not the bottom line—it's about going to bed at night knowing you've done the best job you can do.

I've been fortunate to be surrounded by good people like the guys at Sunsation and Scott Shogren and Shogren Performance Marine.

How many boats does your shop paint a year?

We do about 100. It used to be 110, the caliber of work has gotten bigger. The paint jobs are getting more elaborate. The difficulty has gone up. Sunsation, for example, offers about 20 paint jobs. Some take three days, some take eight days or more.

How much of your work is for Sunsation?

Sunsation makes up about 60 percent of my gross. I also do 15 to 20 boats a year for Shogren, which sells Fountain, and a few for dealers of Checkmate and Cigarette Racing. Black Thunder is another one of our clients.

Do you have private customers as well?

They represent maybe 10 percent of our clientele. We don't do too much private work because we're so heavily involved with the factories.

Are you hands-on in every Mitcher T paint job?

Pretty much. I used to paint every boat. I have nine people working for me now—three of them are what we call "shooters"—but I am still the only designer. Getting the plates computerized on the CAD (computer-aided design) system takes most of my time, but I still do the majority of the layout on each boat. I'll lay down the line and say, "Paint blue here, paint red there and call me when you get to the next step."

How do you compare to your competition?

I think we're all equal in our own right. We all have our niche. We don't really compete against each other. I think people can look at one of Rodney's jobs at Ratical Graphics and say, "That's a Rodney job" or one of Dean's jobs at The Art of Design and say, "That's a Dean job." We all have our own followings and clientele. A lot of that is personality. You get known for you personality as a painter.

And what is your personality?

I'm pretty conservative. I usually try to talk someone out of something before I'll try to talk him into it. I'm not really into the skull-and-crossbones, skateboard-type stuff. I try to steer my customers toward something that will have more longevity. They might want orange fluorescent paint, but I'll point out to them that it says, right on the can, that fluorescent paints fade in six months. Our work definitely has a "northern" feel—it's difficult for me to design for crossover genres like the stuff you see in Florida and California.

Do you worry about your company getting too big and commercial?

(Laughs) Yes. We struggle to stay small—that's been a standing joke around here. There's been so much construction in the last 10 years. We're done.

I am a very quiet person. I like my privacy. My house is next to my studio, and my studio is in the woods in Yankee Springs. We have no signs. We have no storefront. We have deer walking through our front yard. My employees and I spend a lot of time together. We're like a family. We do things like barbecuing and deer hunting together, though I don't get to hunt as much as I used to because I'm so busy. We're not in a metropolitan area and we don't advertise very much. It's a very Norman Rockwell kind of thing, and I like it that way.

One thing people always seem to find fascinating is that I am not a boater. I have a kayak. I've used it twice. I'm an artist. I like boats, but I also like funny cars, and 10 years ago we did a lot of those jobs for well-known people. Now we paint offshore boats.

Everybody has a hobby. Mine is flying—I'm a pilot. Another kind of funny thing is that everyone who walks into my home thinks it will be full of the artwork I have done. I have none of it. When I leave the shop at the end of the day, I leave the shop. I don't surround myself with what I do for a living.

I do have artwork in my home. But none of it is mine.