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How Pantone Is Still Turning Color Into Money

The color company grew more last year than at any other time in its 53-year history

Some 210 new colors came into the world last week. Ballet Slipper, Spice Route, Jurassic Gold, and Sea Turtle, among others. These shades always existed in nature, but now they are official—dramatic names and all. One can buy them from Pantone, a small company in Carlstadt, N.J., that literally snatches its products out of the air.

Pantone monetizes wavelengths and pigments the way Coca-Cola bottles water and Manhattan developers buy up chunks of the sky. Technically, it's a kind of biochemical company. After developing colors in a lab, Pantone makes most of its money by selling the shades and corresponding formulas to fabric mills, printers, and designers in a range of disciplines. It’s a simple model, and business has never been better. While Pantone, now a unit of the industrial giant Danaher, does not detail its financials , spokeswoman Molly Walsh said the company grew more in 2014 than it has in any of its 53 years of mixing ink.