The first recorded American paint factory was established in Boston in 1700 by Thomas Child. A century and a half later, in 1867, D.R. Averill of Ohio patented the first refined paint or "prepared mixture" paint in the United States.
In the mid-1880s, paint factories began to sprout in large numbers in densely populated areas and industrial areas across the country. Mechanized production has made the process of manufacturing paint easy for many non-professional entrepreneurs. The weight of refined paint made it expensive to transport, so in the mid-2000s a fragmented market of small paint manufacturers dominated the paint industry.
To some extent, this pattern still exists today, with small and medium-sized producers in important industrial sectors still serving limited regional markets.