Seeing green: Billie Asmus ’15, the Repaint Lady
By Monique Kleinhuizen ’08, GS’16, content specialist
November 26, 2025 | 3 p.m.
They say necessity is the mother of invention. For Billie (Ingalls) Asmus ’15, that quip was quite literal. As a mom-turned-DIY-entrepreneur, she saw a need for a more eco-friendly way to paint. Now she’s the inventor behind the Repaint Tray and founder of a growing DIY brand. The last year has brought on a move to her first warehouse, a successful appearance on Shark Tank, and burgeoning sales. It’s growth she couldn’t have imagined a handful of years ago.
From Bethel to Italy to Iowa
Asmus was practically destined for Bethel. Her grandpa, uncle, and all three of her older sisters—Leah, Anna, and Abby—were Royals before her. She remembers tagging along for Little Sibs Weekend, staying in her sisters’ dorm rooms, and feeling immediately at home.
“I just remember thinking I was so cool, staying on a college campus,” she laughs. “I remember feeling at home, because I really grew up around Bethel.”
Once she arrived as a full-fledged Bethel student, she dove in. She majored in organizational communication with an emphasis in marketing and a minor in leadership. She was in student government, did a study abroad trip through Europe with the communications studies program, and was mentored by professors Ripley Smith and Peggy Kendall. “They still cheer me on on social media,” she says. Those experiences, and the grit and creativity she learned from them, eventually led to a stint as an au pair in Italy, a job in radio, and then a marketing role for a large farm supply company that’s owned by the family of her now-husband.
Once the couple was married, Asmus relocated from the Twin Cities to Iowa to be closer to her husband, his family, and the company. Then the couple bought an older home and Asmus fell back in love with DIY and home improvement—something she’d dabbled in since childhood.
“I always just had a love for flipping and upcycling furniture,” she says. As the home neared completion, she began taking on projects for friends and family, and the hobby grew alongside their family. Eking out a few hours of worktime while her daughter was napping or in part-time daycare, Asmus recognized a new challenge: she had to pause her project every time she needed to step back into “mom” mode or do a childcare pick-up.
Garbage bags and silicone
The options were sketchy at best. She had to quickly use up the paint in her tray—which was usually topped with disposable plastic liners she’d buy in bulk—or wrap the whole thing in plastic wrap or a garbage bag so it wouldn’t dry into a crusty and impossible-to-clean brick.
She knew there had to be a better solution. And if she, as a DIY hobbyist and fledgling entrepreneur, was frustrated; then other DIY-ers and professional painters must be, too. Imagine how many plastic tray liners they were going through, she thought to herself.
“I remember thinking, ‘oh, I’ll just buy something that’s reusable, like silicone, and even if my paint does dry out, I can just peel the dry paint out and start over.’ I looked, and nothing existed!” she says. “I kept thinking, ‘How does this not exist!?’ I immediately started prototyping and trying to figure out how to make it a reality.”
She hit the dollar store and loaded up on foam-core boards—the kind used in elementary school science projects—and began crafting a prototype that resembled her own science project. Using a hot glue gun, the boards, and a handful of the plastic paint tray liners she’d been buying in bulk, she made a mold of a paint tray. Then she ordered a jug of raw silicone from an online Hollywood prop shop, dumped it into the mold, and created the vision in her head: a silicone paint tray with an airtight cover that could be sealed between uses or easily cleaned and reused. She knew immediately that she’d not only addressed her own frustration about the DIY market, but also had a potential business opportunity on her hands.
Asmus took a business and entrepreneurship course at her local community college, focusing her assignments on her own business idea. She began to develop the tray, identifying market opportunities, and canvassing potential buyers. By the time she finished the semester in 2021, she had registered Repaint Studios as a business and worked with the community college’s engineering department to craft a 3D mold so she could turn out her own injection-molded trays.
Making trays by hand was extremely time-consuming. She knew she needed some serious start-up funds, warehouse space, equipment, and manufacturing partners to make larger batches.
“At that stage, I had a concept. I didn't know if anybody would buy it. And I had no sales,” Asmus recalls. “We were a one-income household, and in all reality, I was pretty much a stay-at-home mom. Nobody was going to give us money!”
What she lacked in funds, Asmus more than made up for in determination and scrappiness. She sold some things on Facebook Marketplace, took an advance from her 401(k), and her dad even loaned her money to get started. She launched a website with a pre-order button, hoping that creating some additional cashflow would help jump-start her manufacturing processes.
“Buy it now”
With a brand becoming more clear and a growing list of early orders in her pocket, Asmus decided to see if ABC’s Shark Tank had any open casting calls before the end of the year. Since 2009, the popular reality TV show has given entrepreneurs the opportunity to pitch their business ideas to a panel of potential investors, or “sharks.” The show had one open casting call left, in May, in Kansas City. Asmus decided she’d give it a shot and drive the four hours.
Before she even got the chance to pitch her product, she was recognized by a producer who had already heard of the Repaint Tray. By the following week, she had official word that she’d made the show, and by June, she was filming in California. And to add a level of intensity to the experience, she found out days before that HGTV stars and entrepreneurs Chip and Joanna Gaines would be the guest sharks in the room.
“I had been following them for years, and they really inspired my DIY background,” Asmus says, recalling the stress of being ushered into a silent room backstage for audio and visual checks. Then a door opened to bright lights, a camera in her face, and a panel of celebrity sharks staring at her.
“I kept thinking, ‘Alright, this is my one chance to say something to America,” Asmus remembers. “How do I want to be perceived? What do I want to say? What is my story that I’m going to tell?”
Wearing denim overalls and her signature shade of bright green, she began by identifying the problem, describing her own experience with dried-up paint and DIY projects that were far more wasteful than they needed to be. Each year, she told the sharks, over 240 million disposable paint tray liners end up in landfills. She held up a Repaint Tray, explaining that it’s the “first-ever reusable, heavy-duty silicone paint tray liner with an air-tight lid…when you’re done with a project, let the paint dry, peel it away, wash it with soap and water, and you’re good to go!”
Her initial pitch—$250,000 in return for 5% of the Repaint Studios business—was turned down. TV personality Barbara Corcoran counteroffered for 15% of the business, and the other sharks bowed out, but the Gaineses remained interested. However, they struggled to imagine how the tray would fit in with their other home goods and decor offerings. Things seemed to be stalling.
Asmus got teary and returned to her story. She described a time soon after she had quit her job and taken a leap of faith to do furniture restoration full-time. She was a tired new mom, frustrated and filled with self-doubt, and her husband brought home a mug by Hearth and Hand—Chip and Joanna’s Target brand—that read, “Actually, I can.”
It was a moment, years earlier, that provided direction and confidence, evidence that her husband had her back and that God was nudging her in the right direction. Sharing the moment again on TV was a full-circle experience. The sharks agreed on a shared partnership arrangement, with the Gaineses and Corcoran splitting a $250,000 investment in return for 15% of the business.
Since the public launch of the Repaint Tray in 2024, sales have already topped 20,000 units. The company has recently moved into its own warehouse, with a full-time team of four along with seasonal fulfillment staff. Longer-term plans are to open a retail space and expand the Repaint product line.
Lessons from her Bethel days
As Asmus looks back at the wild ride of the last few years, she sees Bethel’s fingerprints all over the place, including practical skills and a professional network that have served her well. And the faith she grew during her college years has given her an anchor.
When she was prototyping the first Repaint Tray, she thought back to an early Bethel marketing class where she learned how color can communicate feelings and connect with certain demographics. She thought to herself, standing next to a sea of boring product labels and bland colors, “How can I create a unique brand that’s going to cause people to stop while walking down the paint aisle and notice it, because it's a bright green and right in front of their face?” The signature Repaint green plays into the “eco” side of things, too, subtly hinting at one of the tray’s best selling points: that it’s reusable, not disposable.
Bethel’s Methods of Communication class taught her how to create a survey that’ll produce meaningful results, something that was vital to identifying her marketing niche early on in product development. Now as she scales her business, she’s had to navigate growing pains. There are supply chain and logistics challenges, hiring and retaining high-quality staff is increasingly difficult, and expenses are always increasing. There are days when she has to put her full inbox aside, pull out her own Repaint Tray, and paint something—her way of reminding herself of why she got into this business in the first place.
“You know what’s funny?” Asmus asks during our interview, pulling her chair back and pulling a huge Bethel textbook off the brightly-colored, styled shelves in her office. She holds it up to the camera and shows me the title: Organizational Communication for Survival, positioned on the cover over a stock photo of what looks like a corporate board meeting. “It’s got ‘USED’ stickers all over it, and I’m literally holding it together with painter’s tape.” The moment feels perfectly on-brand for Asmus—resourceful and connected to her Bethel roots. Then she goes on to describe a recent tense moment between two employees. She didn’t quite know what to do, so she retreated to her office and reached for the well-loved book, paging to the chapter on conflict in the workplace.
“Oh my gosh, this is literally my degree. I get to use it!” Asmus thinks to herself. Amidst the surprises that seem to come frequently these days, and as she prepares for the next chapter of growing her brand, Asmus is grateful she has the right tools. “There’s only so many things you can do as leader of a small business, but it helps having that background. I don’t think I’d be able to accomplish some of these things I have been able to, or be the leader that I am, had I not taken those classes.”
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