The Inter-Mountain photo by Edgar Kelley Elkins Sherwin Williams employee David Phillips stands underneath a dragon that he constructed at the store as part of a national sales promotion. The Elkins Sherwin Williams store, which is located in the Tygart Valley Mall, won a display contest for the store’s district, including all of West Virginia.

ELKINS — A large and colorful promotional display designed and built by a local store employee has been honored as the best display of its kind in West Virginia.

The Elkins Sherwin Williams store, located in the Tygart Valley Mall, featured a flying dragon and a castle display titled “Dragon Away Blue Bucket Savings.” Store employee David Phillips dreamed up the concept and assembled the display himself.

“We could make any kind of display for the sale that we wanted,” Ben Daft, the store’s manager, told The Inter-Mountain. “It could have been anything, but David said he wanted to do ‘Dragon Away Blue Bucket Savings’ and make a full-on dragon. I thought it was a great idea and told him to go for it.”

Once finished, the blue, paper mache dragon was large enough to have a 10-foot long wingspan. Its overall length was 9 feet.

“David made the dragon in the back warehouse here at Sherwin Williams,” Daft said. “It took him a week-and-a-half to build, and when it was finished we couldn’t even get it through the door that leads from our warehouse to the store because it was so big. So we had to take it out the garage door in the back and bring it through the double-doors in the front.”

Phillips, who recently moved back to Elkins after being away for many years, works part-time at Sherwin Williams. He is an artist and painter; some of his artwork can be purchased at Artists at Work in downtown Elkins.

“We were coming up with different ideas for the display and the dragon is something I wanted to try,” Phillips told The Inter-Mountain. “We teamed up and got the idea going and I think it turned out well. It was a challenge and pretty fun to do. We’ve received a lot of comments about it and a lot of people seem to really like it.”

Daft said the dragon was constructed mostly from scraps of material that were available at the Sherwin Williams store. 

“David made the dragon all by himself and it is made out of scraps from our truck, like a bunch of cardboard that we were going to throw away, and some plastic,” Daft said. “The only thing on it that he brought from outside the store was the chicken wire for the inside, and old bed sheets that he used for the wings.”

As part of its national “Blue Bucket” sales promotion that took place last week, Sherwin Williams stores across the United States were asked to come up with a creative topic to promote the event. The Elkins store was recognized by the Sherwin Williams corporation as having the best promotion in the state.

Daft noted he was pleased with the effort his employees put forth in building the entire display.

“Doing the dragon was part of a company wide promotion and we won the display contest for the district, which is all the stores in West Virginia, plus Ohio, Kentucky and Maryland,” said Daft. “Our team did a great job with it and we recently got the display posted on the official Sherwin Williams Facebook Page.”