About S2F Painting

Our Story

Run by a painter who spent six years running a supply chain

Most painting businesses are run by painters. S2F is run by a painter who spent six years running supply, inventory and contractors across fourteen locations.

Apostoli Holevas started painting at fourteen, working school holidays alongside his father on school buildings around Brisbane. He went full time in 1996 and ran the business in partnership with his dad from 2003 to 2009.

Then he left the trade entirely. Painting was all he'd ever known and he wanted to find out what else he could do. As operations manager for a retail group he ran a warehouse holding over a million dollars of stock and supplying thirteen sites — tracking inventory across all of them, handling ordering and deliveries, and negotiating supply with major international brands. He also ran the refurbishment program across those sites, from design through contractor negotiation to holding the schedule.

Six years later he came back, because he'd seen how a well-run operation works and knew most of it was missing from painting.

There's a view of painting as someone in old clothes putting paint on a wall. It isn't that. Getting a finish that lasts depends on the preparation, the technique, and choosing the right product for the surface and the climate — and what you're really doing is protecting the most valuable thing most people own. S2F was started in 2015 to run a painting business that takes that seriously.

Apostoli started on his own and had a team within a month. Today S2F runs a small in-house crew alongside a network of subcontractors, which is how a job scales from a single home to a townhouse estate without the standard dropping. He now works on quoting and on the business itself, including building the systems that keep the jobs running.

The name is the method: Start 2 Finish. Good preparation is the start to a perfect finish.