Coloring Expectations
According to analyst firm The Yankee Group, shoppers who buy women's clothing on the Web return approximately 40 percent of merchandise because it doesn't meet expectations in terms of color, fit and quality — more than double that of brick-and-mortar shopping.
Thanks to SHOP WITH COLOR — a joint initiative by Pantone, Inc. and TrueSpectra, Inc. — online consumers can now shop with color confidence. The combination of PANTONE TheRightColorTM solutions and TrueSpectra's ImageTone imaging software enables e-tailers to implement a color consitency strategy that can produce cross-selling opportunities, increased sales and fewer returned items. SHOP WITH COLOR will allow for consumers to search by color using the closest accurate representation of the actual product.
“Shopping by color preference is a powerful customer service that enables consumers to match products quickly and easily,” said Sasa Radulovic, CEO of TrueSpectra. “By working with Pantone, customers reduce time and costs by automating the process of managing images, while ensuring accurate color. Retailers can leverage the advanced functionality of TrueSpectra's ImageTone to speed time to market and display all the various colors in their inventory efficiently and cost-effectively — a merchandising capability that was previously cost-prohibitive.”
Color consistency has long been a problem with Internet shopping. What one e-tailer calls “olive,” another e-tailer may specify as “khaki.” Additionally, monitor calibrations can be inaccurate and differ greatly, causing more inconsistencies with product representation. SHOP WITH COLOR offers a solution by using Pantone's universal color language and specially developed RGB color values with TrueSpectra's ImageTone. ImageTone allows for a single image of the product to be rendered in as many Pantone Colors as needed, eliminating the time intensive process of recapturing each color variation for the image. The end result is a visually accurate color range created without the e-tailer recapturing each color variation.
Headquartered in Carlstadt, NJ, Pantone, Inc. provides globally accepted and accurately portrayed color systems. Pantone products are used by apparel and home furnishings vendors including Liz Claiborne, Lands' End, Nike, Target and Pottery Barn. Pantone delivers products to the textile, equipment, print/prepress, plastics, designer accessories, graphic design and Web development industries.
Founded in 1992 and headquartered in Burlingame, Calif., TrueSpectra, Inc. produces ImageTone — an enterprise-wide dynamic imaging infrastructure that provides a scalable and extensible imaging solution for e-commerce and supply-chain integration as well as for internal access and sharing. Customers include Macy's, Bloomingdale's, Nordstrom.com, Sears Canada, Fortunoff, Excite Japan, NextMonet and Kinko's. Digital Island, Sun Microsystems, Oracle, Informix, Digimarc and Blue Martini Software are strategic partners of TrueSpectra.
