Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work. - Thomas Edison
We're kind of in the same boat. One of my dudes is pretty good with color theory and can typically grab something off the shelf and knowwhich way to bump it.Not sure if it applies to you guys, but nailing down a stock color chart and sticking to it unless otherwise asked has helped a ton.Ninety nine percent of the time the client wants a bright red and that's all that matters. They don't care and likely couldn't tell the differencebetween 185 and 485.Contract side is filling up the shelves though, luckily the majority of it is frequent re-orders.
Contract dudes are in the middle so they make sure everything is exact on their end for their client.And unless we charge for matches, it's no skin off their nose.We don't charge for matches with our good contract clients, but I'm thinking about beginning too, if onlyfor the storage.
does your current ink matching system have a 'recycle' feature?Wilflex will let you recycle old ink into new colors.
Quote from: jvanick on April 24, 2014, 11:53:31 AMdoes your current ink matching system have a 'recycle' feature?Wilflex will let you recycle old ink into new colors.We don't currently have a system but that's what I'm shooting for. I have just started the research on the mixing system I want but I'm still not sold on cleaning house. In two days this week I had to mix 9 custom colors and for what? We had plenty of colors that were close and I doubt the customer would have known the difference. The sales staff is giving them the option to pick any color under the rainbow and once they do that, nothing production can do but mix it up. Monday I'll have a meeting with them and see if I can get this crap straightened up. I've given them all color charts of Union, QCM, Rutland and my local suppliers ink and I went through a lot to get all of those and they aren't using them. I guess they thought I was simply asking that they "try" to use stock colors so I guess I need to tell them that we charge for custom pantone mixes so at least we will be getting paid for spending hours a week mixing up inks. And because everything is done by eye it does take longer to get the right color but we've become pretty good at it. Years ago I remember spending 30 minutes trying to mix a color, and lord help me if it was a brown or some strange blue.
The sales staff is giving them the option to pick any color under the rainbow and once they do that, nothing production can do but mix it up.
I don't charge for custom mixes, but I rarely have clients that care that much, even on logos, I will usually show them the RFU color I have, either the actual ink or a swatch, and they will almost always approve it. For a few clients I match, and sometimes its a bear, but I always mix as little as possible based on coverage and will usually only keep 50-100g just to have on hand for future matching.