Historically, physical color standards have been the foundation of color communication throughout the textile and apparel industry. They're familiar, tangible, and deeply embedded in traditional workflows.

But as digital product creation has become the norm, many teams are asking an important question:

Do physical standards still offer the most efficient way to communicate color?

Getting color right once is one thing. Getting the same color across materials, suppliers, production lots, and locations is the real challenge.

So, what tools make color consistency easier to manage?

The headaches are familiar. Too many lab dips. Too many inconsistent results. Too much time lost. The good news is that most of these issues are increasingly solvable with the right tools: digital color technology.

When we talk about “white” in the textile world, there are a few specialized concepts that need to be understood.

Here's a breakdown of what you need to know if you’re going to be measuring or assessing white fabrics.

In textile workflows color is often treated as a visual reference, when in reality, it is critical data. If that data isn’t centralized, stable, and measurable, color outcomes are left open to interpretation, variation, and avoidable risk across the supply chain. 

Classic Fashion (Jordan) embodies the real-world impact of natific certification. Their labs handle daily approvals of lab dips and production on behalf of major global apparel brands, which is how they began their relationship with natific and the CCP.

Traditionally, most color teams have relied on physical color standards - Fabric swatches dyed and shipped by a standard provider. The limitations of these established standard libraries are well-known…

Digital color technology is not new. It has been around and utilized by brands and suppliers for decades. Some teams, however, still have difficulty letting go of a physical/visual process.

Link to Sourcing Journal’s Fireside Chat featuring Doug Bynum and Marc Levine discussing creating custom color references that can be printed on site in minutes (nSPIRE ColorCards)

Erol Battal, a dyehouse manager based in Turkey, was kind enough to sit down with color industry pro Janet Best in Frankfurt earlier this year to discuss the challenges his teams have faced in the past and how they have been addressed to execute color more efficiently and accurately.

White is one of the most commercially used shades, and it is the most challenging to achieve.

natific recently performed a Color Accreditation Program (CAP) certification at Oceanic Fabric Mill Sdn. Bhd. in Malaysia. They have been supplying fabric to customers for over 40 years. We were excited to see and learn about all of the sustainability measures being taken at their facility. Additionally, we would like to congratulate Oceanic Fabric Mill on their first CAP!

natific eServices help to empower color professionals to perform efficiently and at the highest level. Since we launched our eServices platform at the end of 2019, we have reached 2000 unique users across 41 countries!

Digital color enables faster processes, but the crucial parts remain: mill capabilities and color feasibility. While natific addresses both of these pieces, today we’re talking about feasibility.

Since 2008, natific has pioneered digital color and training solutions, simplifying color processes for brands and suppliers across the globe.

An efficient, sustainable color process looks like this:

Did you know….natific systems can be fully embedded with any PLM?

Today we would like to share about a longtime CAP supplier that has, between 2011 to now, certified 5 of their sites. Three were CAP certified for the first time this year, and two completed reCAPs.