(GFX: Sherwin-Williams Designhouse)
(Images of trees, honeycombs, other colorful imagery)
Bruce Irussi [00:00:07] Color is a tangible, emotional thing.
Amanda Pevito [00:00:11] Everything that the human eye sees, the emotions are all about the color.
(A man and a woman look at color palettes and magazine cutouts)
Bruce Irussi [00:00:15] How something looks to the consumer really drives their buying decisions. So while you may have an idea about color space and a color trend, you have to create samples on your actual parts or your actual product.
(GFX: David Zelch dash Vice President, Sherwin-Williams General Industrial)
David Zelch [00:00:30] The design house was created largely because we were listening to our customers. They had an overarching desire to couple together inspiration and velocity; speed to market.
(GFX: Kiki Redhead new dash Global CMF & Trend Manager, Sherwin-Williams Designhouse)
Kiki Redhead [00:00:43] One of the biggest visions that we had was really to develop a collaborative center where everyone can be in the same place at the same time. Our customers can now come in and collaborate with us here on site and ask us "what if?" What if we could create this sparkly finish? What if we could create this texture?
(GFX: Amanda Pevito – Chemist & Technical Liaison, Sherwin-Williams Designhouse)
Amanda Pevito [00:01:02] The designer has the idea, they can work with the CMF trend person. Then technical can step in and say, OK, this is what you want, this is what we can do. And then it can go to manufacturing and out the door.
(GFX: Bruce Irussi – Senior Vice President, Commercial Excellence, Sherwin-Williams Performance Coatings Group)
Bruce Irussi [00:01:13] That was our vision. Take the expertise that Sherwin-Williams has to offer to the industrial customer in a way that it's never been brought to an industrial customer before. One of the challenges in the coatings world is that you may have different technologies that are all trying to achieve the same color.
Kiki Redhead [00:01:30] On an appliance, you'll have powder over metal on the front, liquid over the plastic control panel, you'll have coil on the side.
Amanda Pevito [00:01:39] You don't want the average consumer to know that, they don't care. All they care about is that the top and the bottom and the sides all match.
Kiki Redhead [00:01:46] We can look at the colors together at the same angle and underneath the same light. So we can also account for any metamerism that might happen over the different technologies and across the different substrates.
Amanda Pevito [00:01:57] So it doesn't take six months to get a color approved. It takes us three months. And that extra three months they have on their competitor getting a new color to market, being efficient, and speed to market, time and cost are all benefits of working with the design house.
David Zelch [00:02:13] We have found ourselves more than once in a position where we're helping a customer actually just take cost out of their own operations through the science of color.
Bruce Irussi [00:02:22] Let's say there are color's a blue. There is a way to get to a blue that is less costly through pigment selection and things like that.
David Zelch [00:02:30] We have had appliance people come through, we've had building products and windows people come through, we've had transportation customers come through, and all of them have found value in this process.
Kiki Redhead [00:02:42] That's the real reward, getting to come up with new ways to share color with the world.
David Zelch [00:02:46] Not only color today, it's also the colors of tomorrow. As we have been building the capabilities of the DesignHouse, we've also begun trend forecasting colors.
(GFX: Inspired by the future, inspired by culture, inspired by the environment)
(A color is highlighted from an image of a supernova, a clay pot, and a jellyfish)
Kiki Redhead [00:02:58] This is a really big initiative and it's a new approach that a lot of other coatings companies don't take. We can provide this sort of direction and information 3-5 years in advance.
David Zelch [00:03:12] I think it's one of the most exciting things that we're doing in the industrial businesses right now.
Bruce Irussi [00:03:20] Sherwin-Williams has a unique position in color.
David Zelch [00:03:23] You look at all the different industries that we participate in... Everything from building products to the automotive industry and the marine industry, even the packaging industry. The amount of data that we have on just where color it is, where it has been, and where it's going is phenomenal.
Bruce Irussi [00:03:41] We should be the color experts. We should bring the muscle of the Sherwin-Williams company to the color conversation. And with the DesignHouse, we really do that for our customers.
(GFX: Sherwin-Williams Designhouse)
