Show Notes
We welcome Tannese to the DPC podcast, a Pantone product manager, who shares insights into her role at Pantone, the color standard for the fashion industry.
Key Points Discussed:
Here are the key takeaways rewritten as teasers to entice the listener to tune in for the full episode:
- Ever wondered what it’s really like working at the color authority for the fashion world? Tune in to hear an inside scoop from a Pantone product manager on her fascinating role and daily responsibilities.
- Don’t miss the valuable insights on understanding the technical aspects that are crucial for success, straight from Tannese with years of hands-on experience.
- Discover the innovative solutions Pantone has developed to help designers and creatives easily integrate color standards into their work. The Paper Traveler and TPG sound like must-haves!
- Learn how building connections, understanding your audience, and providing value beyond revenue are key to thriving in today’s creative businesses. The importance of KPIs is also revealed.
- You’ll be surprised by the wide-ranging industries impacted by Pantone’s work beyond fashion. From office supplies to food packaging, color plays a vital role.
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@designersplantsandcoffee and
@tantrends
Links from this episode:
Transcript
[00:00:00.000] – Zahiyya
Welcome to the Designers’ Plants & Coffee podcast, where we discuss how to succeed as a designer while staying true to yourself, finding peace in the process, and making money doing what we love. Subscribe on YouTube and wherever you get your podcast.
[00:00:12.350] – Zahiyya
We have a guest, Tennese Williams. Tennese works for Pantone. Everybody knows what Pantone is. It’s the color standard for the fashion industry. Tell us how you got into that and what was your journey to the place you are now.
[00:00:25.350] – Tannese
They recruited me. They found me through LinkedIn, of all places. And It was an intense round of interview process, five and six different people. It’s during COVID. I was recruited for product manager, but on marketing and development. I’m still doing products and non-marketing. I got two jobs. But it is fun. I do love it.
[00:00:50.750] – Zahiyya
What stood out to Pantone to make them want to recruit you? What was your background before Pantone?
[00:00:56.540] – Tannese
The fashion background, it was owned by a bigger conglomerate. X-rite bought Pantone, but someone else bought X-Rite. X-rite do the testing equipment and the light boots that we might have remembered as Great Tag, Mike Beth. They bought them out. Everyone in that position before did not come from fashion. They came from just the business side of things, and they realized that they need someone who understood the fashion industry. What made I stood out more than the other candidates was I’m the person that I need to talk to, the colorists, the fashion designers, the product developers. They really needed to understand who their market was. I think I had the edge on that. Plus, I have my MBA marketing, so they were like, Okay, if you’re going to be all the way real. They definitely liked that I was a woman of color because they had a D&I initiative, and they were like, You’re checking all the boxes. The previous person before me was a Black woman.
[00:01:54.860] – Zahiyya
What do you do on a daily basis? What makes up your job?
[00:01:59.300] – Tannese
Most of my morning starts off with a lot of meetings, with internal meetings. Right now, I’m doing VOC’s, Voice of Customers, because I’m always trying to talk to the designers, the mills. We do fashion accessories, too, and I think we need to focus on them as well. So I’m doing a lot of voice of customers. So I’m always talking to brands and trying to see who I’m going to write an article about, who I want to spotlight on the website, who I want to do a partnership with, who I want to parlay into color of the year. So I’m always recruiting different partnership opportunities or co-marketing opportunities. That’s the fun part. The other part is I’m also coming up with new products, research and development and quality, making sure the product that’s out there. I’m fielding a lot of questions from customer service, from our direct customers or clients that come in. Then it’s a lot of writing. If I can get to it, I like writing and actually coming up with the reason to buy this product.
[00:03:04.660] – Zahiyya
How do you succeed as a designer or in the fashion industry, whatever you’re doing, but still have your peace of mind? Because it’s just like we’re not saving lives.
[00:03:13.440] – Tannese
I knew that we’re impacting them. We can elevate or really affect someone’s life. I had a really great interview with this brand that you will soon hear about on the web. But tears. She was like, Thank you for seeing me. Because it’s not just about dealing with the brand brands that are already established, and of course, the Valentinos of the world. But there’s also up and coming brands, not just in fashion, but in beauty, because I think it all ties in. I’m like, I want to talk about nails and makeup. I think it ties in. It’s color. Bringing those newer brands or startups on that platform can change lives. We change them. We don’t save them. We love what we do. We’re designers, we’re creatives. That’s the part that is like, you love what you do. It’s fulfilling, but you We still need to have boundaries.
[00:04:01.360] – LaTisha
Also, when people think of the color of the year, also going to office and even Post-its. Down to the Post-its, they will have Post-its and pens. It’s like your office supplies. The colors that you see in state will come from the color of the year. It’s such a wide range. To hear you talk about fashion and accessories and nails, it’s like, yes.
[00:04:23.860] – Tannese
We have a company that owns Fantome called Veralto, who’s also a woman CEO. It’s a lot of women in upper top management now. But I keep telling Ellie, who is my boss, she’s the President and GM. I was like, Just let me do. We need to be all in this. She was like, Yeah. I’m like, Yeah. Color-coded. If it’s coded in color, we can be there. Really, there’s no limit. I’m on the FHI side, which is the coded color side. I’m like, Basically, anything I look around could be my product. Food and beverage. Well, the packaging is definitely graphics, but the product for Viva Magenta, we did a Viva Magenta on Blue Moon. It sold out in, did they say 24 hours or 48 hours?
[00:05:09.460] – Zahiyya
Because people fail to realize, I mean, Pantone is global. I can use a Pantone. I’ll have to give a number, and the factories all over the world would know exactly what it is.
[00:05:19.050] – Tannese
That’s another thing. Depending on what fashion industry you were in, what company and what budget they had, there’s people to do a lot of things. Everyone has their I was proud to develop color and fabric, and I get to touch and feel, do my presentation, do trend. It came to the numbers. I’m like, I just dictate, this is the price I want and this is the margins I need. Okay, production person.
[00:05:44.640] – Naima
Figure It’s all right. I’m not going to get it out. Make that math happen. Wait, go on. Type your fingers. Do whatever you did to get those numbers. Do that.
[00:05:52.700] – Tannese
Here, they’re like, Oh, no, you, product manager, you own the numbers. You own the KPIs. Oh, and how much you can plan on making. You better calculate it right because we’re going to hold you, too. Kpm is definitely not what I thought it was.
[00:06:07.370] – Zahiyya
You said KPM. Explain to people what that is. Kpi. Kpi.
[00:06:11.960] – Tannese
Yeah. What is it? It’s key performance.
[00:06:14.750] – Naima
I need performance indicators. It’s pretty much all of the things that make up your profit. I guess it’s a fancy term for profit and loss statement. I got sales from my website, Instagram, social media store. When I For advertising. This is how many people followed us on Instagram this week, and this is how many people liked our thing. It can go from the top four things, how much we made, how much we spent. But there’s so many tools that will do it for you. Instagram, analytics, Shopify will give you your weekly numbers.
[00:06:50.060] – Tannese
There’s Google Analytics. We do Google Analytics. It tells us every little thing. That’s good because it helps me with my articles. I like to write articles because I like writing, I like meeting with people, I like blowing people up. But they’re like, What’s the returns on that article? It’s not about revenue all the time. There is a KPI for how many eyeballs, how many clicks? How many people came to your website because of this IG post? How many people went to LinkedIn because of this article? New people that would not have gone in if you didn’t highlight that type of creative. And then the creative, too, brings their audience, too. So I’m like, value that because that’s how you keep growing. You can’t just talk to everyone up top and the same people you always talk to. Not everybody has the budget, but they have the They have the brand or they have the following or they have the new thing that keeps us relevant. So I’m always having to preach that like, You need my articles because we don’t have them. Who are you talking to?
[00:07:57.290] – Zahiyya
So if somebody wanted to go and read the articles that you write, where can they find them?
[00:08:02.820] – Tannese
It’s pantone. Com. Then you click the part that says learn, and then you’ll see product spotlight and case studies. I like product spotlight. I do the product spotlight. It’s really designer spotlight or brand spotlight. Then I slide my products in there. But that way… I did a nice article with one of the designers from Timberland. I think it’s called Constant Development, that he teaches how to make sneakers and stuff like that. But he loved the Ultra Violet. He made a Timberland boots in that color, that purple, won the award and the job to Timberland. Okay, that’s great. I thought it was a cool story. It’s pants on, and everything. Then I came up with my new product, Shameless Plug. It’s called the Paper Traveler. Okay. Because what we do is you can just put it in your purse or your bag, and it’s your book of color wherever you go.
[00:08:56.270] – Zahiyya
I need that.
[00:08:58.510] – Tannese
Yeah, I need that. Every color you need that Pantone has is in a color order. So you’re looking for all your reds, all your pink.
[00:09:05.840] – LaTisha
You could do.
[00:09:06.720] – Zahiyya
Oh, that is excellent.
[00:09:07.780] – Tannese
And there’s standards. So it’s coded. This is a standard and it gives you the code. Because it’s cold, especially during COVID. I developed this when we were in COVID. I’m like, okay, if you’re working on multiple substrates, we have one that’s a passport that looks like this. I’ll show you. This is the passport that I got the idea from, but it’s all cotton. Same idea, but it’s small and it’s cotton, which is good. So you know what it’s going to like, textiles. But I’m like, this is good for fashion designers or people working in textiles. What’s the other rest of the world that’s designing shoes, bags, leathers? There’s a paper guide for fashion. You don’t have to use the formula guide.
[00:09:50.910] – Zahiyya
And what is that called? That’s the TPG. Oh, that’s what she was talking about before. Let me write this down.
[00:09:55.710] – Tannese
Well, that’s what this this book, shame, let’s plug the game. Okay. It has a TPG in it, but we have a guidebook because some people like the guidebook. I got to give you options, but it looks just like the fan book you picked up. But this is coded. It’s pigment-coated. So it’s going to look like whatever you’re going to put on top of something. It’s pigment, not ink. When you use a PMS, this could be a whole panto. They should put this on the website. Good stuff. But when you use the PMS, it’s ink on paper. It’s meant for ink. Ink don’t work on fabric or any hard surface. You need a paint base. That color that you think you got on a PMS and you’re trying to match, it isn’t going to really match. It’s going to take some 2, 3, 4, 10, depending on your male. You’re going from apples to oranges. Ink and pigment, totally different. Can you imagine putting ink to color your dress? It’s like when the designers come to the fabric managers and say, I want my fluorescent, my neon pink or my neon yellow on this cotton shirt.
[00:11:07.940] – Zahiyya
It’s funny that you say that. When I first came into the industry, no one tells you this. You don’t learn this. It’s like, Okay, I want this highlight yellow because I was doing like, boy. And they put it on a cotton T-shirt. I was like, It’s not going to work. It’s not going to work. You see the difference between poly and cotton, how it dies?
[00:11:28.850] – Tannese
It’s just When you realize, I need a different dye. That’s what dying and finishing. With Mrs. Howard, Professor Howard.
[00:11:37.690] – LaTisha
Oh, my gosh.
[00:11:39.530] – Tannese
Another thing that’s always been in my brain forever in the day. When you cry in a class, you remember. The teacher in that class. But I’m like, I’m glad I learned this because this is my life every day. Or it was when I was dealing with lots of designers that didn’t know their fabrics. When you don’t know your technical, as a designer, you better know your technical stuff. If you don’t know fabrics and fibers, dye stuffs, what are you doing?
[00:12:10.710] – LaTisha
It seems like your earlier career really gave you all of the experience and the background for really for… It set you up for Pantone because all of that wealth, experience, knowledge, the people, the connections prepared you for Pantone.
[00:12:30.390] – Tannese
Yeah, I think so. You know how you have those moments where sometimes you’re in a room and you’re like, Do I belong here? Because they’re just talking jargon and they’re being very corporate, very financed and the $20 billion or whatever they just closed. I’m like, Oh, was that a billion? A billion dollar? Oh, okay. But then I was like, I belong here because this is my industry. I know this.
[00:12:56.050] – Zahiyya
Thank you for coming on. We’re going to link all of Tenees’ links in the description below, so definitely take a look. Signing off. This is Zahee from Cover Me Sheet.
[00:13:05.790] – LaTisha
And LaTisha Winston for Keeping You as Stitches.
[00:13:08.680] – Naima
Naima for Furious Threads.
[00:13:10.730] – Tannese
And Tenees Williams from Pantone.entones..
