First and foremost we are Colour Management Experts with over 35 years practical experience from industry. We are competent in the consultancy of Laboratory Dyeing & Testing, Process Control, Process Engineering, Dye Machine and Dye Kitchen Automation, Mill & Wash House Consultancy, Colour Measurement and Visual Colour Assessment, Brand Colour Accreditation
We are based in Leicester (East Midlands) UK, the home of the UK Textile Industry.
product for both Textiles and the Food & Drink Industry.
Russell Thorpe
Managing Director & Business owner. Provides technical consultancy to brands and retailers. Having worked for a US brand -Timberland Company (Global Technical Manager for Colour & Environmental Compliance) and with over 35 years practical experience in Textile & Apparel Colour Management.
We await further challenging projects, we love to help - we provide
We also provide consultancy & training for
A message from Russell Thorpe the Managing Director
We also specialise in Professional Grading & Colour Correction of non-linear HDV & 4K Video Production.
Our Mission
Our aim is to provide competitively priced Colour Consultancy service to brands and retailers.
More complex colour product, i.e. prints, graphics, checks, stripes, denim and multi-colour fabrics require a different approach. Traditional Spectrophotometers cannot measure these types of fabrics very well, and at best they provide only an ‘average’ reading of the colour and sample a small area only.
New camera based systems can image samples in accurate colour, provide colour calibrated images with colour measurement capability and importantly allows images to be communicated to other people ‘electronically’.
It is quite common for brands and retailers to use In-Country Offices or regional sourcing hubs to co-ordinate production and provide some form of colour management, often intending that people within this organisational chain provide some responsibility of getting the job right, and primarily providing some form of first level checking or ‘vetting’ of lab dyes (lab dips), print strike-offs and other colour submits to help alleviate workload at Head Office while pushing-back responsibility into the supply chain (or at the very least keeping decision making within the country to avoid costly time delays).
In an ideal world it would be good only to receive colour submissions that have a high chance of being approved by the buyer, since poor attempts would have been sent back to the garment makers/mills by the In Country Offices. Of course there are always times where commercially or technically a colour cannot always be achieved, and these submissions are sent in for ‘commercial consideration’.
In a fast moving and competitive market, there has never been a more important time to maximise the time & resource spent on the colour approval process. Some people may see the colour management process as an un-necessary expense. It’s actually about getting a consistent process in place to ensure product conformance and working with partners and supply chain to improve lead times and the avoidance of adverse costs associated with rejected or late production leading to loss of sales. A well-managed colour approval process should become cost neutral.
