Case Study · Brand Owner · Packaging
An international brand managing licensed products across multiple markets needed a better way to communicate color with its print suppliers. With Alder Color Solutions' cloud conformance platform, approvals that once dragged on for months now happen in real time, on press, from anywhere.
The brand sells worldwide and licenses products for other brands too, relying on Print Service Providers (PSPs) in Canada, Mexico, and China to produce its packaging. Communicating color accurately across those suppliers — and signing off on it — was slow, inconsistent, and dependent on travel.
They wanted a single, objective way to define color expectations and verify conformance, without flying to a press floor on three continents to do it.
The brand chose Alder Color Solutions for our cloud-based conformance platform — already proven with other brands to save time, money, and headaches. The platform's "inspectors" check accuracy and conformance to ISO standards across the whole process: lighting, process color, spot colors, instruments, ink, paper, and environment.
The most powerful piece lets the brand define every spec for a print job in one place — color space reference and profile, DeltaE and E-factor tolerances, spectral definitions with separate "snowflake" tolerancing, measurement mode, lighting and viewing details, and the control strip or color bar.
The PSP receives an invitation to the project and uploads color measurement data as specified, which generates a scorecard back to the brand — in real time, while the job is on press. That single capability removes the need for in-person press checks.
Beyond conformance, the Color Match feature uses an inexpensive inkjet printer to generate highly accurate, repeatable spot color references — like a fan deck, but more precise — and outputs CxF files that vendors can run to as standards.
The impact was immediate. Working a complete rebrand for their toughest brand partner, the team had spent roughly two months with an ink vendor and couldn't get a single set of colors approved. With Color Match, they approved 13 colors in one week — several created manually because the supplied targets were too small to measure.
"This one feature is worth the purchase for us. We'd worked with a vendor for about two months and didn't have a single set of color approved — I was beyond frustrated. I got 13 color matches approved using Color Match in one week. We'll cut a TON of time out of this process. This feature is gold for us."
For brand owners managing color across distributed print suppliers, the platform turns a subjective, travel-heavy process into objective, real-time data.
The brand defines every spec for a job in the Project Inspector — color space and profile, DeltaE and E-factor tolerances, spectral definitions, measurement mode, lighting, and control strip. The print supplier uploads measurement data and the brand receives a real-time conformance scorecard while the job is on press.
Yes. Because conformance data is uploaded and scored in real time as the job runs, brands can verify and approve color remotely — removing the need to travel to the press floor.
Color Match uses an inexpensive inkjet printer to produce accurate, repeatable spot color references — like a fan deck, but more precise — and outputs CxF files vendors can run to as standards. One brand approved 13 colors in a single week with it.
If you work for a brand in the package printing space, we'll show you how it works. Demonstrations and trials are available for qualified prospects.