Skip to main content

Why Pantone Colors Are So Expensive

Proprietary pigments and brand power make designer hues premium.

  • Branding
  • Entrepreneurship
  • Business Law & Economics
  • Retail, Marketing and Advertising
  • Manufacturing & Packaging
  • Product Development
  • Product Distribution
  • Chapter 1 Taking Risks & Making Profits
  • Chapter 3 Globalization
  • Chapter 6 Entrepreneurship
  • Chapter 13 Marketing
  • Chapter 14 Product & Price
  • Chapter 15 Distribution
  • Blog
  • Video
  • Understanding Business
  • Higher Education

Walk down the snack aisle of your local grocery store and you’ll likely be barraged with all sorts of colors: bright blue on packages of Oreo cookies, canary yellow for Keebler products, and so on. The vast majority of brands purchase these bold hues from a company called Pantone, a global powerhouse that sells standardized recipes for mixing colors. The video below takes an extensive look at how Pantone manages to earn millions for its color combinations without ever selling a drop of paint. 

Questions:

  1. Why do companies around the world depend on Pantone for color references?
  2. How does Pantone’s virtual monopoly on color combinations affect businesses both big and small?
Author: NickelsMcHughMcHugh