3 mistakes Sherwin-Williams made in firing TikTok star Tony Piloseno

There was a time when nobody over the age of 25 had heard of Tony Piloseno.

He was a college student and Sherwin-Williams associate who loved to mix paint for his 1.2 million TikTok followers. Then Sherwin-Williams fired him for using company paint on company time—what they called “gross misconduct,” even though he bought his own paint. The action turned him into a bona fide internet media star.

Piloseno is now happily employed by Florida Paints, a paint manufacturer that wanted his passion inside their company. “What impressed me about Tony is that he wasn’t polished. He was a kid who mixed paints to make great colors in a dynamic way,” Florida Paints co-founder Don Strube says. “The hard part about paint is finding people who see paint as exciting—and Tony does. Color is what makes the world look great, and Tony was making paint amazing.”

Sherwin-Williams will feel the pain of losing Piloseno for decades. Here’s why:

1. Young people buy paint, too.

Piloseno’s immediate superiors loved his passion and told him to take his work to company headquarters. Sherwin-Williams’ marketing team told him to get lost—and a month later, they canned him.