Mark Golden on Paint

I’ll admit it… I’m a color junkie. I love making new colors. Every time we investigate a new pigment, I’m trying to figure out how we can put it into the line. Unfortunately, reality sets in for a moment and no matter our position of influence, we have to justify why we need another color in the line. What value will it bring to our customers and is it just too close to other colors that are already within the line.

Sharing this company with all our Employee Owners has reinforced the need to make sure we are all able to present a valid argument and not simply make decrees by force of will. So when a color with a significant history in our line begins to shift, because of manufacture changes, it is a big deal here. Over the years we’ve had quite a few shifts in color, either caused by a manufacturer of pigment going out of business, being purchased by another company, or simply procedures or raw materials have changed causing color shift. Some colors like Hansa Yellow Lt., or the natural earth colors tend to be so variable, that it is difficult not to have a fairly broad range of acceptable hues.

We have a very robust pre-inspection routine for almost all our raw materials and especially our pigments. But even with this we still face inevitable pigment color changes. When this happens it is also a time we can revisit all the new colorants to see if when we make the change will we also be able to improve some quality of the color; Increase the cleanliness, increase the clarity of a color, adjust the tinting strength, find a manufacturer with greater consistency or purity of color.

We realize these changes have profound impact on folks. We try to make sure we make these color adjustments as carefully as possible. We will always try to retain a small source of the old color just incase you have a project where the color shift is untenable. Additionally, we will announce when these unexpected color shifts occur. It certainly doesn’t feel good when we need to make these changes, but it certainly feels better when we do this in concert with our customers.