Origins

The Idea of a Graffiti Paint and Its Origin in the roguish Barcelona of the Early 1990s

I started the idea for Montana in 1993 and we manufactured the first product in 1994. I was 27 years old at the time. The first time I came into contact with graffiti writers - Kapi and Moockie - they were 22-23 years old, and I moved in a familiar environment. The connection was immediate, I was dressed as a mountaineer and they were dressed as bboys.

That small age difference between us connected us. I made a parallel in my life with my passion, in fact Montana is called that way because it reminds me of the mountains. Every weekend, I would face a wall to climb it, and you did the same to paint it. It's a bit like turning your back on the world, that we don't give a damn, and in that being face to the wall, we meet.

Some with creativity and others with the desire to climb the wall. For me there were many points in common: in both there are certain risks, I also went against what my parents wanted, (because parents want a normal guy). I was hooked.

At that time I had finished studying and fate wanted me to start working in a decoration paint company, but I went to the United States for 6 months to climb. When I came back I had lost my job and looking for a new job I ended up at the Felton company.

I had never bought a spray can of paint before, so the first thing I did was examine who bought the product. When I investigated, I saw that more sprays were sold in a small garden supply store in Barcelona, a store that was on Vía Layetana, than in Servei Estació, a very famous mega DIY hardware store, etc. This didn't make sense to me and I asked my boss. He had no idea, he didn't know or care about why more were sold there, against all odds.

Connecting with Barcelona's Graffiti Writers

The boss's apathy would forever shape my view of corporate organization and, in a way, marked the kind of boss I didn't want to be. The incompetence of my superiors pushed me into entrepreneurship.

Luckily, Felton's delivery guy explained to me that a graffiti artist worked as a clerk in that small shop.

I had already seen graffiti in the United States, and I had also seen some pieces in Barcelona, as well as the political graffiti of the post-transition period. All of that had already impressed me, from the signatures on the walls of my high school. So I got in the car and went there.

The store owner introduced me to Moockie, not without first making it clear that the spray paint was for him and his friends. That made me even more excited.

We couldn't talk much while he was working, but he told me to wait for him outside and that gave us time for Kapi to join the conversation.

I left that first meeting with the idea that this passion had to be transferred to a project, but at Felton - despite trying and even expanding the color range - I saw that there was no projection and decided to create my own company.

1994: Montana Colors was born

A few years earlier, I ran into a childhood friend, Miquel Galea, who was looking for a job, and I took him to Felton. When I later told him that I was leaving to start my own company, he came with me. We pooled our savings, plus a small bank loan, and started Montana Colors. With the help of a good former boss of mine who gave us a space in his company in Esparreguera, we started to manufacture.

Montana comes from Latin, from the toponym of mountains. Many people asked me if it came from the state (in the United States) or from the movie Scarface where the great Al Pacino plays Tony Montana but no. It also does not come from the rugby player, the quarterback for the San Francisco 49ers, Joe Montana, who I liked a lot when I was young. Mar, my partner at the time, was the logo designer. The ball or sphere was a world of colors, shapes that could expand and contract, a crazy idea.

It came because at that time and when I started thinking about the project all the names of spray paint brands were Felton Spray, SprayColors, and I wanted to get out of that and put a name that I liked and at that time Montana transported me a bit to my roll. Although now seeing it from a distance, I wish I hadn't put it. It would have saved me the problems of lawsuits and such.

Well, with the help of a good ex-boss of mine who gave us a space inside his company in Esparreguera, we started manufacturing.

From Esparreguera we moved to Vacarisses, where we had the first fire and finally we went to Sant Viçens de Castellet.

Although we were manufacturing there, the company's registered office was in Sabadell, where I am from, and the address of the incorporation was my parents' house. I still remember my parents freaking out with the people who came to ask about the company.

It was all very exciting but difficult. If during the first 10 years, any friend had decided to invest in the company, I would have dissuaded him. Because one thing is the idea, then putting it on paper and another very different thing is carrying it out. The same thing happens with the mountain, the idea is great, but there are such terrible moments that all you want is to get off the wall and go home.

Montana's Debut at Pueblo Espanyol

Everyone knows that at that Felton-sponsored exhibition, we gave the writers the first black classics we had made in Montana. What they don't know is that I made the deal with Aerosol Art, while I was still at Felton and I thought it was fair that people should know about our new sprays. Anyway, the Felton boss still didn't care about graffiti.

He came from the automotive industry, where you bought a can every 7 years and therefore the customer didn't care too much about the price, but for the way I saw things that didn't work with graffiti. For writers who need to paint and practice to evolve, it doesn't make sense for sprays to be so expensive. Apart from that, that market, which I ultimately found stale, didn't interest me at all.

Relationships with graffiti writers

I got along well with the writers, because I understood their passion in a way, because I was also waiting to live mine as soon as the weekend arrived.

Now it doesn't say it anymore, but before the ID used to say what you did for a living, and that didn't have to do with who we really are. Because we are not what we work for. Our job is a part of it, but we are much more and in that I felt very close to graffiti.

Also, it's become fashionable now, but graffiti has always been a lifestyle, long before the name was coined for commercial purposes, because it encompasses a very particular way of seeing the world.

I think Montana had a successful career because it focused on what people loved to do for love, for passion. I saw people risking their lives, their personal relationships, their economy. There I saw, not the business because at that age I didn't care, but I did see what I could dedicate my life to.

The thing is, we didn't have to do much and soon we were exporting paint. Do you know who the exporter was? The artists, well, at that time they were writers who invited writers. I didn't do anything. I have always defined myself as the right person, at the right time, in the right place, but the rest was gravity.

It was the city, Barcelona, which was positioning itself as the last paradise of freedom to pee in the street, to get drunk or to smoke joints or to skate or to paint. People came as if they were going to Disneyland and here we had a paint brand and a paint store, which was possibly the first Graffiti shop in the world or one of the first. The magic was Barcelona and above all these suburban kids who with their poor English began to explain to the people who came to try the paint that it had brutal coverage and 0 toxicity, that it was made by me who was a good chemist.

And apart from that, I did it for graffiti, because I understood very well that the outline is unrepeatable. People flipped out over the price - especially for the pockets of the foreigners-. I didn't do anything, I didn't go with the paint suitcase.

A kid would call me and tell me that he had been with Sendys and that he had flipped out over the paint. Or, "Look, hey, my father has a hardware store." Or Dafne from Italy would come with a bag, and I would go to Sants to take her the paint in the van.

On Friday afternoons I would arrive to distribute - which at that time I did - to Game Over and the same kids would fill up the cars. Well, I remember that the cars would stop to fill everything, the seats, the trunk... and Moockie would count the cans they took.

There was a time, -in the fax era-, that I would unplug the fax on Friday afternoons so that no more orders would come in. I thought "let the competition do something." We couldn't keep up.

A new entrepreneur model

I was a problem for the industry.

When I arrived in the aerosol industry, I was a disruptor and I was hated because at that time the paint was sold expensive and the kids who painted, stole it. I'm talking about 1993.

I offered the classic for 225 pesetas and you didn't have to steal it anymore. If we did the conversion, it would be selling for 1.30 euros. So people stopped going there to stole it.

The industry didn't care because they weren't losing, the one who was losing was the store. I did a favor to the kids, who stopped stealing, and to the store owner who was no longer being robbed. I became popular with the group of writers and the group of shopkeepers who had new consumers.

At first, I manufactured, sold, and distributed. I had a kind of double life, I was a kind of Superman. I would go with overalls and wear street clothes underneath, I would change in the car and go out dressed for meetings.

For me, Montana was like a son, I know everything that happens to him. I was the shepherd and the dog of the flock, involved in everything. I could go to the factory and start a machine with the tip of my dick. Either a client would come to see me and I would win them over immediately. Or I would go to a jam session and know 90% of the writers (not anymore). I knew everything, and that also made me a slave and gave me a lot of healthy envy.

In fact, at first I, under a false name, answered the questions that people asked me on the customer service line. I loved it. For example, they would ask me if the paint was vegan, which it is, they would ask me where to throw away the can. We gave them ideas and answers to what they needed.

I didn't have an office in the company, I didn't like it. That's all the rage now, but I've always been a bit disgusted by "the boss's office". I would sit at any free table and wander around the company, go to the factory to talk to people, to be with them. When I needed peace, I worked from home.

I believe that the boss is a status that has to be real, and I felt like a boss because people, the workers, respected me. I felt good and I could walk around the factory without seeing hateful looks. That made me feel good and that's what I miss.

The early years and the clash with society

In the beginning, there was a lot of morbidity. Once we went to an interview, Zosen and I, on Radio 4. The journalist was Silvia Copulo, who was quite famous, and they had also invited the mayor of Sant Cugat.

They put us on two opposing sides and hammered us. At that time, the company was already 6-8 years old. It had 40-50 workers and we were already exporting. The bastard mayor, on the way out, put his hand on my shoulder in a patriarchal way and said: "Kid, why don't you get another job?". He was pardoning my life, instead of congratulating me.

I thought, how do they criminalize graffiti? How do they talk about something they have no idea about? It's tremendous, because when I saw a kid from La Mina speaking poor English with a kid from Rotterdam, looking at a blackbook, my hair stood on end. Graffiti was giving them a chance to be a better person. Pure survival. A kid, in La Mina, in Bon Pastor, one of the poorest neighborhoods in the city, is speaking English and will go to a shitty river and take an interrail. He won't pay for it, but that's not so important.

Now, with kids who never leave their homes, where everything is virtual, painting graffiti is the best thing they can do, because it's real.

It's true that I've made a living from it, but after 29 years at Montana and 57 years of life, graffiti, in my opinion, is infinitely more positive than negative.

And from an economic point of view as well, because many people made a living, created an online or physical store, jobs were created as representatives, workshops, repainting jobs...

Even for companies like Montana, because now all the paint companies in the world have their young line, for the rebellious kids who paint graffiti.

The least accepted part of graffiti... trains

I had gone to paint trains a few times with the Koma Sound Cartel collective from Montpellier. Whenever I was in the area, I would go painting with them. I experimented, basically filling in, but I haven't had any trouble, because if they didn't see it clearly, we wouldn't go.

The first slap: Montana Colors vs Montana Cans

Everyone has heard this story. We had a distributor in Germany who started to grow a lot. This distributor contemplated the possibility of making a pact with another company and for us to leave the business so that this larger company could manufacture there in Germany and thus take the brand away from us.

They used a strategy called 'knockout and replacement', meaning that everything was planned to bring us down.

This German paint aerosol manufacturer, which marketed under the Duplicolor brand, arrived in Switzerland and bought a varnish company called Farbo, which had a varnish brand called Montana. This brand existed before ours, but we could coexist with it because there was no competition or confusion. Generic or proper name brands, such as Montana (a geographical name), can coexist as long as they do not confuse the consumer and both parties agree.

The German company bought this varnish company, and that included the rights prior to ours, which were from the 1960s. Then they said that our company was creating market confusion and also tried to convince our customers not to pay us with the argument that our product was illegal.

The German company took advantage of this 'Montana' varnish brand (with a different typeface) to say that we were prospering thanks to its prestige. On the other hand, they tried to cause us irreparable harm by lying and saying that our paint contained lead and that we did not warn about it on the labeling.

It was all very sad, since no one in Switzerland knew this Montana varnish brand, but, well, in the end it was a matter for the judges. We saw that in some countries they gave us the right, in others to them, and here in the end the smartest thing was to get out of this atrocity; by that I mean that I did not have the money or time to continue wasting it on lawyers and lawsuits. So I abandoned the Montana brand and registered the MTN brand, although as a company I could still call myself Montana Colors.

That was a very sad moment, because it was when I began to realize that things were not as I expected and that the so-called big or powerful ones are used to playing dirty."

The second slap: fires

Montana Colors has suffered 3 fires in its factories, one in 2002 where everything was destroyed and 2 smaller ones in 2013. It is quite common in this type of company, because we mix flammable products, such as solvents, gas, resins, and always with the human factor involved. The three fires we have suffered have been due to process errors or accidents. It is very difficult to prevent them from happening, but we must prevent the same type of error from happening again. The first one was more spectacular, the smoke column was enormous and could be seen from hundreds of kilometers away as it was a very clear day.

The other two were in other sections, and smaller, and we were able to recover very quickly. Almost all paint companies have had one of these problems in their lifetime, but in the end, to look for something positive, I would say that overcoming difficulties has always been a source of pride for me. Especially because none of them resulted in serious injuries.

Jordi Rubio and his relationship with art

I have a collection that I bought when we set up the gallery in 2004. I also have gifts that many people have given me. My collection is quite large: I have part of it at home and the other part in the Montana offices.

Now I'm thinking about what I can do with it, what kind of outlet to give it. In fact, when I sold Montana, I took two important things out of the sale for me. One is the artistic heritage and the other is the industrial heritage.

I have a piece by Okuda, another by Felipe Pantone... Some pieces are basic and have not had a repercussion over time, but for me they are more valuable than others because they have an emotional value, the value of someone who gives you the best they have, which is their talent.

I helped, I kept some pieces... in fact, in the first exhibition we did in the Montana gallery, with Os Gemeos, two paintings were sold. I bought one myself - almost out of pity - and they charged me 1,500 euros and I thought "damn, that's expensive!" - and another painting that transported them to success.

The second painting was bought by an art broker who works for the owner of Nike. This guy's next step was to invite them to New York to paint in Phillip Knight's apartment. From there they got onto the list of contacts of those who pull the strings of urban art. That's why we have such a good relationship, because they associate that with the invitation I made them to paint in the factory and in the 2004 exhibition, because it was their launch pad.

Now, at the moment I am the curator of Besart, one of the walls of the Besos riverbank as it passes through Sta Coloma, which aims to be the longest open-air museum in the world (8km). I have curated 3 interventions, but right now the project is on hold.

Life after Montana

I'm fine, but maybe I still have the feeling that there's a lot left to do, and that it could have been done better, but it's a critical sense, like when as a creator, you have to finish your work.

The only thing that bothered me about Montana was seeing the amount of waste we generated. I was thinking of a new product or project that could assimilate all that waste, but hey, someone will find a solution.

Environmental awareness has been growing in recent years, especially since the brand's beginnings, but everything pollutes, it's inevitable.

Now I'm still looking for peace, and it's a process, a mourning. Montana was always self-financed from the beginning. I was always in constant debt to the banks and in the end a company with 300 employees had me condemned. I started thinking that I needed a change and then I chose the best option for Montana to continue in the industrial zone where it is. In the end, time will tell if I made a good or bad decision. I still don't know, it's been a short time and for the moment Montana continues and I'm looking for myself.

They say that out of 100 companies that start up, only 3 survive. In the end, you don't have to forget where you come from and I think a lot of people who start businesses and do well forget their origins. Maybe that's why I left, to avoid becoming someone I wasn't, because in the end you run the risk of getting so far away from the goal... Apart from the fact that you're getting older, you can get into a way of doing things that no longer connects with what really got you there. That's why I say you have to know how to leave the party.

For example, there was one thing I regretted a lot, people say it's normal, but it really bothered me not knowing the names of all my employees. It bothered me that a kid would come to the factory, know my name, but not know his name.

In fact, I gave one of my factory managers an objective. I told him: "Look, you have to tell me - I don't have to know them - but you as the factory manager do, and you have to tell me the names of 20 people and if you get it wrong, I'll fire you. I gave him three days to study them, because I found it lamentable that this person would come to the factory every day and not enter through the factory, but through the offices.

Important moments

There have been many, many reasons. I'll tell you that the intensity has been total, because there was an anecdote every day, every day.

Once I was moved in Japan, in Tokyo. I started to cry in front of a display, I had seen aerosols before but I was moved. I was so far away, it was my first time traveling to Japan and seeing a Montana display there I flipped.

There have been many, many reasons. I'll tell you that the intensity has been total, because there was an anecdote every day, every day.

One thing that impressed me a lot and I experienced it with a bit of a complex, was a boy who had tattooed my name on his arm. One day this boy, a Frenchman, asked me for a tag. I told him that I had a tag of toyaco, but I did it for him and didn't give it any more importance. 6-7 months later he came to the Montana store, called me and showed me his arm with my tag.

I said to him: "Thank goodness we're not dating." He explained: "It's a name that no one will understand. Your product has inspired my life change, and you are behind the product." He gave me this tribute.

My workers, my people... think that they would come and tell me: "Jordi, I'm getting married. It's to see how the work is going and if I can buy an apartment." I thought: "If I knew how my current account is" - and I said to him: "Alicia - she's a girl I love very much - if you work well, and we do things well, and we keep getting paid, buy the apartment." I turned it around to motivate her.

Every month when the payrolls came I thought... "holy shit, I'm 250 million short for tomorrow". You become a bit of a mother hen. In the end I'm not there anymore but I miss my people, my little creatures, my customers, my team.