2025 Business Hall of Fame: John G. Morikis

John G. Morikis didn’t want to build a new headquarters and a research and development center for The Sherwin-Williams Co. when he became the firm’s CEO in 2016. He felt he had no choice.

Sherwin-Williams, the global maker and developer of paint and coatings for 159 years, was based in the aging Landmark Office Towers on West Prospect Avenue in Cleveland. Elevators were stalling and toilets were backing up in the complex.

Morikis planned to use company profits to grow the business. But he also knew that Sherwin-Williams — which today employs 64,000 workers in more than 4,300 plants and stores — would lose an edge in attracting the best talent if it didn’t have better digs.

The big question was location. Morikis says the company had a financial responsibility to its shareholders to consider moving out of Cleveland.

“There was a short period of time when we were thinking we were leaving,” says Morikis, 63. “It was very competitive out there. Those were some long sleepless nights for me because I was thinking about the impact leaving would have on the Cleveland community.”

The decision to stay involved other factors in addition to finances.

“My heart was always to make it work in Cleveland,” says Morikis. “We believed that Sherwin is important to Cleveland, and that Cleveland is important to Sherwin. In my heart and head, I knew that if we left Cleveland, there would be a hole here that would be difficult to fill.”

In February 2020, Sherwin-Williams announced that it would build a new Downtown Cleveland headquarters just west of Public Square and a research and development center in Brecksville.The company started to move into the buildings in September and October. 

Tom Gilligan, Sherwin-Williams’s retired chief of human resources, says the company received tempting offers to relocate out of Cleveland, especially to southern states.

“In the end, John’s loyalty to Cleveland, and the understanding of the company’s history here and what the city and Sherwin-Williams mean to each other, won out,” Gilligan says.

Morikis, who retired from Sherwin-Williams at the end of 2024, was the first and only company CEO to rise to that position from a management trainee. The Lake Station, Indiana, native was hired in 1984, immediately after he graduated from college.

His earliest Sherwin-Williams job didn’t pay as much as entry-level positions at other companies, but money wasn’t the only factor in his decision. “Sherwin-Williams offered a career path of greater responsibilities and opportunities,” Morikis says. “That’s what attracted me.”

Morikis, in his early 20s, was given a new paint store to manage in Valparaiso, Indiana, not far from his hometown. His bosses told him the store would have a successful first year if losses were capped at $64,000. In the end, it lost only $400 and was named Sherwin-Williams’ best new store of the year.

In 2016, just three months after he became CEO, Morikis pulled the trigger on a multibillion-dollar acquisition of The Valspar Corp., a competing maker of paint and coatings in Minneapolis with more than 11,000 workers in 26 countries.

Sherwin-Williams’ market cap grew from about $30 million before the Valspar purchase was finalized to about $80 billion afterward. The merger also brought fresh talent to the company, including Heidi G. Petz, who succeeded Morikis as CEO.

Morikis is staying active in retirement. He’s on the board of directors at Whirlpool Corp., UPS and General Mills, and he’s chairman of the University Hospitals Board of Directors.

“I still consider myself young,” Morikis says.  

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