In any traditional brand or retailer’s product development process the product manager or design team require between 3-6 physical lab swatches/lab-dips per color on selected fabrics. Season after season, year after year.
This procedure takes between 2-8 weeks or longer depending on the color, number of submit rounds and materials.
It doesn’t stop here. In reality, once the lab-dip is approved, designers are faced with incremental deviations from the initial concept color to the 2nd or 3rd production lot. The actual color produced is often not known until the finished article arrives at the store. When color coordination and consistency are poor it leads to lost sales or big markdowns.
Case study at a natific client: Color deviation across various garments.
Why island solutions aren’t the answer
Some have tried to introduce digital color management principles into the product development and sourcing processes as standalone “island solutions”. But when each brand has developed its own separate set of standard requirements, the results can be significant inefficiencies in the textile industry. Global Color Coordination was a huge challenge and natific provided the solution.
Solutions for 21st century Color Managers
A decade ago, the emergence of cloud-based databases fostered the development of the natific ColorWarehouse. This project started due to the lack of functionality and ease-of-use if the systems offered by the traditional OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturers) at that time.
natific ColorWarehouse was developed by experts in the field with functions that are available to users 24/7. The dashboard system provides powerful statistics and KPI’s to monitor and benchmark the performance of suppliers (e.g. standards in use, production accuracy and precision, automated reporting, compare shades between different mills etc.).
The system is easy to use for mills as it integrates with traditional spectrophotometers, established working principles and procedures, and communicates with most commonly used PLM solutions.
natific ColorWarehouse Dashboard.
Globally recognized
ColorWarehouse was the first system that interconnected traditional color processes in the apparel textile industry with the advances of digital technology.
Several Fortune 500 companies use natific ColorWarehouse in the US and European retail sectors. Additionally, more than 500 companies in the apparel and footwear industry benefit from faster decision making and significant cost reductions to the whole supply chain.
In the coming natific news, we will have a closer look at the more specific benefits of online color data management. Color data management that allows efficient and transparent data analysis for mills, suppliers, retailers and brands.
Data or die.
Sincerely,
your natific team