Laid-Off Colleagues Make a Clean Start With Graffiti ‘Blaster’

Bob Phillips and Mark Ginchereau considered going into business together long before they were laid off, last September, from Marine Spill Response Corp. in Port Hueneme.

It was only after the layoffs, however, that they truly saw the writing on the wall. And the writing was graffiti.

Finding themselves out of work, Phillips and Ginchereau created Blast-Mor Industries, which they launched last month. Through the Oxnard company, the entrepreneurs manufacture and market a carbon dioxide-powered portable abrasive blasting system to remove graffiti from walls and other surfaces.

The two men have spent much of the past few weeks demonstrating their product, known as the Blaster, for officials at city governments, park districts, schools and property management firms in Ventura, Santa Barbara and Los Angeles counties, as well as individuals in and outside the area.

Last week they traveled to Albuquerque to show the Blaster at the Graffiti Education Summit sponsored by the city. In May, they plan to promote the Blaster at the Multi-Agency Graffiti Intervention Conference in Alhambra, which is put on by the state of California, Los Angeles County and Los Angeles city officials. In late May, they are scheduled to attend the Western States Graffiti Summit in Utah.

“When we started kicking around ideas for starting up a business, we wanted something with a huge market, possibly with a national appeal,” Phillips said. “We wanted the business to have some redeeming social value. We put our heads together and started thinking about some of the problems in the country and how we could possibly solve them.”

That their effort would turn to something environmental is not all that surprising, considering the background of the two men. Their last employer, the national nonprofit Marine Spill Response Corp., was established to clean up hazardous marine oil spills.

Phillips had been the safety and health branch manager at the MSRC southwest regional office in Port Hueneme for 3 1/2 years. Ginchereau was employed there for five years as supervisor of procurement and contracts, responsible for lining up people who could respond quickly to catastrophic oil spills.

“We are both very much concerned with the environment,” Ginchereau said. “Now we want to go out on our own and at the same time take responsibility for our community.”

In promoting their new product, Phillips and Ginchereau said they are focusing on its small size, which makes it easy for one person to transport and operate. At 16 pounds, they said, it is a far cry from the more common 2-ton sandblasting rigs that generally take at least two people to run.

“We’re trying to educate municipalities that not one single tool is the answer to the graffiti problem,” Ginchereau said. “They have to have an arsenal if they are going to keep their city, town, or village in top shape. . . . There’s plenty of room for all of us.”

The sales pitch proved effective on officials in Ojai, one of the stops on the Blast-Mor demonstration tour.

“It’s probably one of the best graffiti removers we’ve seen,” said Stan Moore, Ojai’s director of public works. “One person can handle it and take care of the cleanup in a short period of time. We feel it would fit into our operation because we have a small staff.”

An additional selling point, Moore said, was the Blaster’s ability to remove graffiti from trees using baking soda as the abrasive substance. “It does not impact the tree,” he said, “but it removes the graffiti.”

Moore said his department probably will buy the $595 Blaster. The city now removes graffiti with liquid chemical abrasives that are applied manually.