case study
Across Europe, most paint retailers offer customers an "approximate color search" to find matching paints. These services use a color matching system to find a color that is closer to the color the customer is looking for. While such services can provide customers with paint colors that are close to what they expect, providing a color that exactly matches the customer's inspiration has not yet been achieved.
British retailer B&Q has teamed up with color specialist X-Rite Pantone and paint manufacturer Valspar to change this paradigm by offering bespoke color solutions. This solution creates paint colors that exactly match the color the customer wants to achieve.
History background
B&Q is a European specialist home improvement and garden center retailer and ranks third in the world. Companies know that providing accurate paint color matching services at their retail locations will give them a significant competitive advantage. In 2004, B&Q approached X-Rite Pantone to use the company's color matching solutions as part of their service.
Over the next decade, it became apparent to B&Q that their investments should be focused on paint tinting. They hope to offer customers more products, provide new levels of service, and create new ways for paint suppliers and retailers to interact.
In 2013, B&Q took their precision color matching philosophy in a new direction, forming a strategic partnership with Valspar Corporation, a global leader in the coatings industry. B&Q, X-Rite Pantone and Valspar will work together to enable the full deployment of B&Q's exact color matching service across a total of 357 UK retail stores.
get accurate color
The color matching solution used by B&Q included X-Rite Pantone's ColorDesigner color matching software package and MatchRite iVue Spectrophotometer . This versatile non-contact Spectrophotometer allows B&Q staff to read the color of virtually any sample a customer may provide, even patterned, textured, bulky or even bulky items. The instrument includes switchable aperture sizes of 6 mm and 12 mm, so that very small measurements can be read during the color matching process.
The iVue Spectrophotometer works with X-Rite's ColorDesigner® color matching software package. The software speeds up and refines the paint selection process for customers. B&Q is able to formulate the exact color the customer desires with the exact paint product, eliminating wasted labor and formulation errors.
This automated color matching also enables B&Q to build a color database from which customer details can be retrieved. Customers can see their previously ordered paint colors and reorder from any store across the country. This is a market professional service item offered to customers that no other retailer has yet been able to do.
Education on the value of precise color matching
There is a huge difference between this new exact color matching and the previous approximate color matching solution. Therefore, it is crucial for B&Q to educate its employees as well as customers about these huge differences.
They first invested a lot of time in training, making sure employees fully understood the differences between the old system and the new color scheme. Employees also received training on how to sample and mix paint. So far, 14,000 workers have been trained and 10 to 20 people per store have been trained in paint tinting.
The training gives B&Q's staff full confidence in the quality of the products they deliver and enables them to effectively deliver the value of their paint color solutions.
It also helps customers understand the eye-catching difference that precise color matching can make in the color they choose. B&Q, with the assistance of Valspar, hosted a series of business presentations to demonstrate the power of precise color matching and convince with facts.
The tagline for this promotion: "Are you a believer?" In the promotion, B&Q challenged customers to see the difference between a color obtained using exact color matching and the color inspired by the customer.
To test the difference, customers brought in a variety of items, including a doll's house, a bike frame, a soccer jersey, and even a red fender from a car. For all the testing the company did, customer satisfaction was extremely high, with not a single customer saying the colorway wasn't "good enough."
beat the competition
B&Q says performance so far has been "incredible" and the solution has made them a leader in the coatings supply market.
Simon Parker, commercial planning manager at B&Q, points out, "Ultimately, it's not about the brand of paint, it's about giving the customer a choice of color and making sure that color is good. We haven't been able to do that from the old supplier we were using before. Some. But now, bringing together great technology, training and a value proposition, we’ve created a paint resource that’s vibrant, vibrant, clean, fresh, and everything customers expect from B&Q.”
B&Q says the solution is technically sound and works as promised. Simon Parker also said, "It's not a single thing that makes it work, it's the combination of all the components that work together."
The color matching solution also keeps the company's sales growing. B&Q recently completed their first trading peak over Easter and the upcoming May bank holiday. Sales of this solution far exceeded expectations during this busy season.
Additionally, B&Q sees its market share gaining quite significantly against competitors in all segments of the coatings industry. This solution attracts more and more customers to B&Q and away from its competitors.
