Ballet Slipper, Spice Route, Jurassic Gold and Sea Turtle…Oh My!
Pantone is still turning color into money, according to the recent Bloomberg Business article, “How Pantone Is Still Turning Color Into Money???. The company has grown more in the last year than it has any other time in its 53-year history. In the past week, 210 new colors were introduced to the world, which include Ballet Slipper, Spice Route, Jurassic Gold and Sea Turtle. All the shades have existed in nature, but are now official.
Pantone makes most of its money by selling shades and corresponding formulas to fabric mills, printers and designers in a range of disciplines. Therefore, the colors should be identical even if you ordered a product to be printed at a mill in China. It should match the one coming off the rollers in France, as long as both facilities have purchased the Pantone color portfolio and the corresponding inks. Pantone also has business income that comes in the form of licensing, such as merchandise with generic-looking color tiles, iPhone cases, kids books and much more.
The fashion world also depends on the Pantone color system for the textiles used in designing the next season’s latest look. For example, Tiffany has its baby-blue boxes (Pantone 1837), Hermes has the orange in their scarves (Pantone 16-1448) and Christian Louboutin has shoe soles (Pantone 18-1663). Pantone chose Marsala as the color of the year, which is why you may have seen so much Marsala incorporated into many designers’ fashion lines.
To keep up with the latest colors and shades, Pantone recommends buying a new stack of its shades every year because colors fade, even Pantone’s.
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