Visual Next and ColourMart, Ltd., a developer of cloud-based color management solutions, are partnering to integrate precision color management capabilities into Visual Next’s Visual PLM™ platform. The addition of Color Lifecycle Management (CLM) tools to Visual PLM promises to streamline and improve the speed and accuracy of color palette management, lab dip approvals, bulk fabric color QC, and other color processes.
According to Visual Next’s Vice President of Research and Development Charles Benoualid, “With so many fashion retailers, brands, and manufacturers challenged by the lack of speed and accuracy around color-related processes, we saw the addition of CLM capabilities as a natural extension of PLM. In much the same way PLM accelerates and brings transparency and collaboration to product development, CLM can transform traditionally manual, time-consuming, and subjective color tasks into more accurate and responsive processes with permanent removal of time, costs, and errors.”
ColourMart’s innovative PaletteManager™ solution is used by colorists, designers, and developers to develop and manage color palettes. Advanced search tools enable users to quickly search libraries by color, text, and other attributes. Users can sort, filter, edit, annotate, and manage library colors to build new palettes that can be split, combined, compared, and analyzed visually in 2D or 3D. The ColorFlow ™ tool uses an intuitive dashboard display to track and manage the entire color approval process. It provides a much higher level of visibility and control to both specifiers and color suppliers (dye houses/mills) as they manage digital and physical color submissions and approvals.
“While color is one of the most important aspects of fashion, most PLM systems do not support digital color measurement and management processes,” explained ColourMart Owner Richard Lawn. “We have long believed that the marriage of PLM and CLM could accelerate and improve color decisions and applications. We are pleased with the opportunity to partner with Visual Next and look forward to empowering their customers to streamline and improve the accuracy of their color management and approval processes.”