With a focus on sustainability, Walmart continues to be a leader in color specification and control. Earlier this year, Walmart notified their apparel and home goods suppliers of a new certification program to combat wasted time and resources and decrease the global impact of a traditional color approval process.
Since then, Walmart's Home business unit has seen many updates and enhancements to the color evaluation process to reduce processing time, shipping, and material costs. This has resulted in improved consistency for Walmart customers and has allowed them to further our sustainability efforts across the supply chain.
Whether producing apparel or home goods using textiles, plastic, ceramic, or some other material, all of Walmart’s suppliers must be accredited and submit digital color for approval rather than a physical swatch.
Walmart’s Digital Color Program can:
- Eliminate the back and forth associated with physical color reviews,
- Improve the color quality and consistency of incoming product shipments,
- Reduce waste and rework,
- Satisfy the timelines of faster and more demanding markets, and
- Promote global sustainability initiatives.
To earn accreditation, suppliers must follow Walmart’s standard operating procedures and use a Walmart-specified digital color solution. This solution enables Walmart to communicate digital color standards so their suppliers can work with confidence. It also helps suppliers verify if color will pass inspection before shipment.
X-Rite is proud to be one of the approved suppliers for Walmart’s Digital Color Program. With X-Rite’s help, apparel and home goods suppliers can adhere to digital color best practices and demonstrate their commitment to delivering consistent color with less waste and rework.
Keep reading to learn more about the solution and our discounted bundle rate for Walmart suppliers.
X-Rite’s End-to-End Digital Color Solution for Walmart Suppliers
The X-Rite bundle for Walmart Suppliers includes a color measurement device, quality control software, device optimization tools, and a light booth. Here’s how this approved solution can help accredited Walmart suppliers dramatically improve productivity, reduce waste, and meet their sustainability goals.
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A Benchtop Spectrophotometer
A spectrophotometer captures precise spectral data to eliminate color subjectivity.
Walmart approved X-Rite’s Ci7800 and Ci7830 sphere benchtop spectrophotometers for their suppliers to communicate, share, and coordinate color-critical values and specifications. The Ci7800 and Ci7830 both offer tight inter-instrument agreement and repeatability for color integrity across the Walmart supply chain.
- Quality Control Software
Quality control software compares measured production samples against the digital standard provided by Walmart and provides pass/fail metrics.
X-Rite’s specified software is Color iQC for suppliers who use the Ci7800 or Ci7830 spectrophotometer because it fully integrates with the device. In addition to pass/fail tolerancing, Color iQC can quantify color differences to help determine where color went wrong. It also generates color data performance reports and maintains a complete audit trail to improve communication between Walmart and the supply chain. You can learn more about the benefits of X-Rite’s exclusive audit trail in this blog.
- A Validation and Optimization Tool
It’s important to validate spectrophotometer accuracy to avoid uncertainty and color measurement errors. Even though X-Rite’s Ci7800 and Ci7830 offer tight inter-instrument agreement, all spectrophotometer brands, makes, and models – no matter the cost or manufacturer – are susceptible to drift.
An exclusive X-Rite solution, NetProfiler is a blend of cloud database, client software and calibrated color standards to validate and optimize instrument performance, identify instruments in need of service, and reduce variation between devices across supply chains. With NetProfiler, Walmart’s suppliers can optimize and certify instrument performance in real time, remotely, without sending to a service center for validation. The Ci7800 and Ci7830 spectrophotometers even have embedded NetProfiler status lights to verify the device is optimized before each measurement.
- A Light Booth
Color looks different when lighting changes. Using a light booth to visually evaluate raw materials and production samples next to each other and under different light sources can help identify color inconsistencies, metameric effects, and the impact of optical brightening agents (OBAs).
X-Rite’s approved light booths are SpectraLight QC or Judge QC with Walmart-specified LED lamps to replicate different lighting environments. X-Rite light booths, based on Gretag Macbeth technology, are recognized as the industry standard for visual color evaluation. With NIST traceability, X-Rite offers worldwide competence in calibration, certification, service, and support.
- Certificate Numbers
Once a supplier starts using X-Rite’s digital color solution and completes all steps for accreditation, X-Rite will submit a certificate number to the Color Operations Team at Walmart’s Centralized Color Office on the supplier’s behalf. This number is entered into ColorFlow software and run against each submitted job for digital verification.
Special Bundle Pricing for Walmart Suppliers
Introducing digital tools into a global production supply chain can help suppliers cut time in half to respond to market demands more quickly, but it can feel overwhelming. X-Rite is here to help Walmart’s supply chain achieve the highest level of color accuracy and consistency.
If you’re interested in learning more about X-Rite’s approved solution for Walmart suppliers, need help with Walmart accreditation, or want to learn more about our discounted bundle rate for Walmart suppliers, send us an email at wal-mart@xrite.com and someone will be in touch with more information.
