The Company Inside Your Sprayer Started With a Frozen Grease Gun

In the winter of 1926, a Minneapolis parking-lot attendant named Russell Gray was losing a small daily fight with a grease gun. When the temperature dropped, the grease turned to sludge and the hand pump refused to move it. Gray's answer was not to complain about the cold. It was to build an air-powered grease gun that would pump grease no matter what the thermometer said. He and his brother Leil started a company to sell it. First-year sales came to about $35,000.

A hundred years later, that company - Graco Inc. - is still solving the same unglamorous problem, only at a much larger scale. It moves, measures, controls, dispenses and sprays fluids and powders, from thin paints and solvents to thick sealants, adhesives and heavy lubricants. If you have ever used an airless paint sprayer, driven a car whose body was sealed on a Graco-equipped line, or drunk something processed through sanitary pumps, you have probably relied on Graco equipment without ever seeing the name.

What it actually doesThe business of moving fluid, precisely

The core idea is deceptively narrow. Graco engineers pumps, sprayers, meters, valves and applicators, then builds them to survive demanding, repetitive industrial use. The trick is range. The same company that sells a homeowner a compact airless sprayer for a fence also sells automakers robotic finishing systems and sells chemical plants specialty transfer pumps. Handling a watery solvent and handling a paste-like adhesive are very different engineering problems, and Graco has spent decades learning both.

That expertise is the product. Customers are not paying only for a motor and a housing; they are paying for equipment that puts the right amount of material in the right place with as little waste, mess and downtime as possible. In finishing and dispensing, precision is money - overspray and misapplied adhesive are pure cost.

The product line reflects that patience. It began with lubrication - grease guns and, within two years, air-powered units that pumped automotive fluids straight from shipping drums through a hose to the service bay. After World War II the company pushed beyond lubricant handling into paint pumps and direct-from-drum industrial fluids. From there the catalog kept widening: airless and electrostatic finishing, powder coating, sealant and adhesive metering, liquid silicone rubber systems, sanitary process pumps, and line-striping equipment for roads and warehouse floors. The common thread is not an industry. It is a physics problem.

The segmentsThree markets, one obsession

Starting in 2025, Graco organized itself into three reportable segments, each a different slice of the same fluid-handling world. The Contractor segment is the most familiar: paint and texture sprayers and line-striping gear for professional painters, contractors and homeowners. The Industrial segment covers finishing, coating, sealant and adhesive systems, including powder and automated lines used in manufacturing. The Expansion Markets segment holds newer and specialized ventures - environmental, semiconductor, high-pressure valves and electric motors - where Graco is placing longer-term bets.

Who buys itFrom a homeowner's deck to an assembly line

Graco's customer list is unusually wide for a single manufacturer. On one end are professional painters and weekend DIYers reaching for an airless sprayer. On the other are automotive and general manufacturers running high-volume coating and sealing, vehicle-service shops that depend on lubrication systems, and process industries - chemicals, water and wastewater, food and beverage - that need pumps they can trust around sensitive or hazardous material. The equipment shows up in more than 30 countries.

What ties these buyers together is a shared headache: getting material from a container to a surface, cleanly and repeatably. A contractor wants a smooth finish and fewer trips up the ladder. A factory wants a sealed seam and no line stoppage. A food processor wants a pump that meets sanitary standards. Different worlds, same underlying job.

The modelSell the sprayer, then the parts forever

Graco rarely sells direct. Instead it works through a global network of specialized independent distributors who handle local sales, service and support. That structure keeps Graco focused on engineering and manufacturing while distributors own the customer relationship in each market. It also builds a moat that is hard to see and harder to copy: a rival can design a competing pump, but reproducing decades of distributor trust across dozens of countries is a different order of difficulty.

The financial magic is in what comes after the sale. Equipment wears. Nozzles, seals, tips and pumps need replacement. That aftermarket of spare parts, accessories and service is recurring and high-margin, and it turns a one-time equipment purchase into a long relationship. It is a classic picks-and-shovels business: whoever is spraying, pumping or coating, Graco sells the tool - and then the refills.

Research and development gets protected accordingly. Graco pours a meaningful share of sales back into engineering every year, on the logic that customers keep paying premium prices only if the equipment keeps earning it in reliability and efficiency. New nozzle geometries, more durable pumps and smarter electric drives are not marketing garnish here; they are the reason a distributor can walk into a paint shop or a factory and ask for more money than a generic competitor.

The numbersSoftware-like margins on steel

The results read like a much flashier company. Graco booked roughly $2.1 billion in revenue in 2024, with operating margins near 26% - unusual for a maker of physical machines. It has been a steady dividend payer and a long-running member of the S&P 400. In 2026 it reported record quarterly sales and operating earnings, with net earnings up about 14% for the quarter. The discipline is the point: lean manufacturing, premium pricing justified by reliability, and an aftermarket that keeps cash flowing between big equipment cycles.

The rivalsWhere Graco sits in the market

Graco competes across several niches rather than against one clear rival. In coating and dispensing it runs up against Nordson; in paint spray it faces Wagner; and in the broader world of pumps and fluid-handling it shares space with diversified players like IDEX, Dover, Ingersoll Rand and Atlas Copco, plus regional specialists. What distinguishes Graco is breadth combined with depth - few competitors span homeowner sprayers, automotive finishing robots and sanitary process pumps while treating each as a serious engineering discipline.

GrowthBuying its way into new fluids

Organic engineering is only half the story. Graco grows by folding tuck-in acquisitions into its distribution machine. In 2012 it bought finishing businesses - including the Swiss powder-coating brand Gema - from Illinois Tool Works for about $650 million. In 2026 it agreed to acquire Valco Melton, a maker of precision adhesive-application and quality-assurance systems used in packaging and manufacturing, for $447 million in cash; Valco Melton generated roughly $145 million in 2025 revenue. Each deal extends the range of materials Graco can help customers move and apply.

A century inThe milestones

Two GracosA note on the other one

There is a small identity quirk worth clearing up. The Graco that makes strollers and car seats is a separate company owned by Newell Brands. This Graco - NYSE: GGG - is the Minneapolis fluid-handling manufacturer. Same name, different world. The ticker, incidentally, is a nod to the founding Gray family, three Gs for a company that has kept the family name for a century.

The cultureQuiet, engineering-led, Minnesotan

Graco's temperament matches its products: understated and built to last. Leadership has been unusually stable - Patrick McHale ran the company from 2007 until Mark Sheahan took over as CEO in 2021 - and the manufacturing base stays close to home, concentrated in Minnesota and Ohio. The company leans on lean operations and long-term thinking rather than splashy reinvention. Its foundation supports community and STEM causes, and to mark the centennial the Graco Foundation put $1 million behind a Centennial Impact Initiative. For a firm that spends its days on overspray ratios and pump seals, that is about as sentimental as it gets.

A hundred years after a frozen grease gun, the address is about to change - Graco is planning a move from Minneapolis to Dayton, Minnesota, by around 2027 - but the obsession has not. Move the material. Measure it. Put it exactly where it belongs. Everything else Graco does is a footnote to that one sentence.