BTMA - British Textile Machinery Association

VeriVide is traditionally known as a company which designs and manufactures a range of specialist lighting, but in truth, the company is all about colour:

• Viewing colour in consistent and accurate lighting.
• Digitally measuring colour and appearance using the DigiEye System.
• Managing colour through the use of ChromaShare - the innovative web-based colour management and quality control software.
• Specifying colour as an official distributor of Pantone products.

Lighting

VeriVide, designs and manufactures a range of specialist lighting and colour viewing cabinets to international standards, enabling reliable colour management by providing consistent viewing conditions regardless of where within the global supply chain product is viewed.  

In addition to the textile and apparel supply chain, a diverse array of industry sectors use VeriVide products, including graphics, automotive, food, interiors and furnishing. The company's colour viewing cabinets are used whenever colour assessment is critical to product quality and colour consistency.

Since the company formed, in 1964, VeriVide has been dedicated to expertise in colour and visual assessment equipment and this specialisation remains at the core of its continuing success, ensuring the correct environment for the accurate visual assessment of colour.

The VeriVide light booth/light box is now relied upon throughout the world to assess colour and to establish and maintain visual quality standards. It is specified by major global retailers.

Testing units

VeriVide also supplies complementary visual units for textile testing enabling physical samples to be assessed. The company has a wide range of textile testing viewers - from the AATCC viewing board, which assesses creases, to the PAV viewer, which assesses pilling.

Bespoke lighting

VeriVide can work with customers to ensure the correct light source and equipment to fit specific needs. Whether the requirement is for transmitted or reflected light or a viewing specification with a specific angle, VeriVide has the solution.

All VeriVide's products meet the relevant international and colour standards, the most important being the CIE (International Commission on Illumination).

DigiEye

The DigiEye is a non-contact colour measurement and digital imaging system, developed in response to a market needs.

Over the years, Spectrophotometers have undeniably made significant improvements to the colour approval process within the retail supply-chain, but their application has been largely limited to products with a solid colour appearance. In addition, these traditional instruments intrinsically measure only 'average' colour, assessing the limited area of the product exposed to the instrument's aperture.

The limitations are further compounded if the product has any form of multi-coloured characteristics or appearance, uneven or inconsistent surface, a colour area too small to be captured by the instrument or any sort of surface effect, such as carpet pile and the sheen of satin and silk.

The DigiEye System addresses these challenges to provide a 'best practice' combination of lighting and visual assessment principles, together with non-contact instrumental measurement giving quantifiable and objective quality control.

Unlike a Spectrophotometer, the DigiEye System allows the entire product to be measured, ensuring that all colours can be analysed and assessed in context with all other visual and surface effect elements of a product.

DigiEye can also accommodate those items which are integral components of the apparel industry, such as lace/lingerie, patterns, and prints, home furnishings, that are non-solid in colour and are heavily textured in appearance.

The controlled, consistent method of high resolution image capture also allows simultaneous measurement of more than one sample at the same time, to allow for example, the measurement of multiple batch samples against the established standard.

Put simply, it measures and evaluates the colour in context - as seen by the consumer - and provides quantifiable, correlated, consistent visual assessment against an agreed visual standard.

It also enables the global communication of both product colour data and the related image.

In addition, the DigiEye is available as a large area imaging system enabling whole garments and print repeats to be imaged, colour measured and communicated worldwide.

DigiGrade

Historically, colour fastness grading was undertaken by trained and experienced graders using a standard illumination cabinet and a set of grey-scales. Grading can now be achieved digitally, however, using DigiGrade - the colour fastness feature within DigiEye.

DigiEye ensures the objective evaluation of changes in shade and staining. It is simple to use and requires minimal training, and because it allows multiple samples to be graded within a single image, there are opportunities for a reduction in time to market for the manufacturer and an increased laboratory throughput.

As with all DigiEye features, the images and results can be sent electronically, saving the time and expense of shipping the relevant samples.

The DigiGrade Colour Fastness feature is used to evaluate wash fastness results and is also capable of evaluating Crocking (dry and wet rubbing), changes of shade for all products, and determining the endpoint and final grade for light fastness.

DigiGrade is used and approved by M&S and other major retailers and their supply chains and also by independent and mill test houses around the world.

It is accepted as part of ISO 17025 UKAS accreditation (or the equivalent national body).

ChromaShare

VeriVide is the exclusive world-wide distributor of ChromaShare, a web-based colour management and quality control application with unrivalled ease of use and flexibility.

It will be of particular interest to fashion retailers and their extended supply chains, since ChromaShare's Smart Client  software provides a fully integrated and flexible platform integrating the whole range of colour functionality into one application.

The flexibility of the solution means it can also work in conjunction with an existing colour system. This technology provides seamless visibility of the colour process anywhere in the world - from design, to colour production control and beyond.

The ChromaShare application has numerous benefits allowing users to:

• Perform all aspects of palette development.
• Gain control of the entire colour approval process.
• Effectively track and report colour status updates.
• Monitor supply-chain spectrophotometers.

A global supply chain can interface directly with the company using just a web browser, and because the application stores colours and images over the web, collaborating with colleagues and suppliers around the world is a seamless experience.

The system is extremely intuitive and with extensive use of 'drag and drop', ensures all levels of user are accommodated.

Importantly ChromaShare's data structure enables full integration with common enterprise systems, such as POM, PLM and ERP for 'end to end' colour and product development visibility.

The ChromaShare SmartClient software is modular for ease of use and cost effectiveness, allowing users to purchase the modules they need for their particular requirements including:

CS PaletteShare - provides a wide range of colour input, storage, creation, comparison and searching capability together with a comprehensive and intuitive quality control package.

CS WorkFlow - allows requests for lab dip submits to be made directly within the software, then receives and organises the responses from suppliers, enabling full control of the lab dip process.

CS ImageShare - allows users to import, store, extract colour from, re-colour and introduce layers into images. Images also carry a calibration file so they can be viewed in accurate colour.

For further details visit www.verivide.com/chromashare

Pantone Colour Products

VeriVide has worked with the global fashion industry for over 40 years and as such, is ideally placed, as an official Pantone distributor, to offer advice on the best Pantone products to accommodate a company's needs, and importantly its budget - advice backed by practical and reliable experience from people who have actually used Pantone products within the apparel industry.

VeriVide offers the full product range of Pantone's Fashion and Home System - a very extensive range of colour for colour selection, palette development and range building - 1,925 colours to be precise. This is an ideal system for those working in fashion, homeware or interior design. VeriVide also supplies Pantone's traditional graphics products, which are invaluable when working with licensed artwork and packaging.

Included in the VeriVed Pantone range are office reference systems, each designed to suit difference ways of working. The Pantone Cotton Swatch Files consist of four volumes of loose swatches to enable easy palette creation, while the Cotton Swatch Set is a box of colours arranged chromatically. A great option for those on a tighter budget is the Pantone Cotton Selector - two smaller volumes with colours arranged on semi-removable waterfall strips.

For something more portable, the Pantone Cotton Passport is an easy-to-use hinged booklet which easily slips into luggage for comparative shopping trips and for visiting shows. 

Pantone SMART swatch cards

Fashion and textiles evolve, and so does the thinking at Pantone, which has inspired a redesign of the Pantone Fashion and Home Colour System and a partnership with Clariant International to produce the Pantone SMART formulation - the world’s first method of colour creation designed with the fashion and home furnishings markets specifically in mind.

VeriVide is the UK distributor of this new product, and holds stock of SMART swatch cards in all 1,925 colours.

These SMART swatch cards are individual 4-inch x 4-inch  (10cm x 10cm) cotton swatches, each identified with the Pantone Textile Number. They provide the most accurate and effective way to communicate and specify colour choices to clients and manufacturers.

Swatch cards of the same colour can be sent to a company's dyer or fabric supplier to aid in the coordination of multi-component programs. Spectral data is for each shade is readily available, as are recipes for shade replication using globally available dyes in cotton, nylon and polyester. VeriVide is happy to help with sourcing recipes and advice.

Pantone SMART swatch cards are designed to shorten the lead times of colour development and maximise production, using durable colours formulated to maximise colour fastness.