STANDARDISATION - STANDARDISING TASTE

Colouring by numbers

THIS FILE IS A DRAFT. SINCE THERE IS ALMOST NO PROSPECT OF MY COMPLETING THE RESEARCH AND RE-WRITING, I AM POSTING IT, AND SOME RELATED DRAFTS, SO THAT THE INFORMATION AND IDEAS WILL BE AVAILABLE TO ANYONE WHO WANTS TO PURSUE THE SUBJECT.

Between wars, oligopolies further constricted entrepreneurship. The individualism available for small businessmen and professionals shrank, before being re-inflated in the realm of consumption. Consumer sovereignty came to epitomise freedom. Professors of economics assured better-off shoppers that they could distinguish themselves from the masses by making rational decisions at the margins of their preferences. Meanwhile, marketers channelled choice into profitable pathways. Industry associations worked to ensure that any increase in the range of products available did not hurt earnings. The dilemma for marketers was how to increase effective demand while directing purchases towards the lines with the highest rate of return.

The application of colour to commodities offers a case study of this regulation of consumer preference. The article opens by illustrating the threat posed to profitability by allowing consumers to buy whatever takes their fancy. The account then shows that the manufacture of choice of colours became part of the drive to lower unit costs through standardisation. The apparatuses for this tailoring of taste included the Colour Councils set up by corporations and backed by governments. The rest of the article traverses the variants of these controls in regard to five groups of commodities: fabrics, footwear, automobiles, house paints and kitchenware. The latter often were plastic

Costs of free choice
The trouble with the U.S. ladies’ clothing industry was that, unlike steel, chemicals and autos, it had not been oligopolised. In 1929, 7,588 establishments were making ladies’ garments, with an average of twenty employees. Competition prevailed as it had throughout the economy before the rise of the Trusts in the 1870s.[1] Men’s wear had become more like a regulated market, with a few firms even listed on the Big Board of the New York Stock Exchange. [2] As merchandisers encouraged the spread of seasonal fashions to men’s clothing, that department was slipping towards the chaos of the women’s sector. [3]

The penalty from a failure to coordinate consumer choices became clear in 1938 when an “unrestrained demand for upper leathers of virtually every color in the spectrum” hurt the Australian footwear industry: 

the feeling is growing among suppliers that there is a grave risk of overdoing the thing. ’Tis about time, the experienced among them affirm, that buyers curtailed the scope of the color range: otherwise they will find themselves left with large quantities of “Yesterday’s favourites”.[4]

FOOTNOTE In 1947, tanners argued that the demand for light coloured sole leather was a waste of time and money which had come into favour because mechanisation had let in unskilled firms which used dark shades to hide faults; buyers demanded “white” to see for what they were paying.[5]

Standardisation
The channeling of colour preferences was but one instance of the “Standardisation, Simplification and Simplified Practice” that governments and companies promoted during the 1920s.

19^TH CENTURY, FACTS FROM STANDARDISATION ARTICLE

RE UK, US AUSTRALIA

The Standards Association of Australia quoted the definitions given by U. S President Herbert Hoover, himself a mining engineer, before expanding on its objectives:

Simplification being the method of reducing waste by the elimination of unnecessary variety in products. Simplified Practice is therefore the concerted application of simplification by producers, distributors and consumers, to reduce capital charges, stocks, storage space, and similar overhead costs, in order to increase sales turnover and specialised production and distribution – and so to increase employment – by simplifying requirements and permitting more ready and economical handling of the demand. During the war, all of the belligerent nations developed national Simplified Practice Schemes, though, with the passing of the war period, emergency conditions were discarded, valuable lessons were forgotten, and in many instances a rapid return was made to the uneconomic conditions of over-variety which existed in pre-war days.[6]

The depression revived pressures to standarise the economy IN ORDER to create jobs.

In one sense, fascism represented a return to war-time co-ordination.

The demands of colour matching exceeded the vocabulary available for the delineation. English has 4,000 words for colours but human beings can register two million colour sensations. Hence, the trades could not rely on the eye, no matter how experienced.[7] Textile, paint and printing industries adopted the Munsell System of Colour Notation. Henry Munsell (18 – 19 ) was a U.S. artist and teacher. In 1942, the U.S. Standards Organisation endorsed the 1915 revision of his colour System.[8]

Colour Councils
To cope with these cross-currents, Harrods had issued a list of fashionable colours during the 1920s. Then, in 1930, British industrialists set up a Colour Council “to determine and coordinate colour for the colour-makers and colour-users in the textile and allied trades”.[9]

?????? The marketers portrayed their channeling of preference as a service to consumer who, as a result, would be able coordinate her ensemble with greater ease.[10]

The British Colour Council secured two forms of Royal Patronage: first, a senior Royal acted as “patron”; secondly, the Palace condescended to allow the Council to apply the Royal “brand” when announcing the colours for Coronations, Royal Tours or Weddings. The association of Royals with “trade” distressed the Melbourne establishment when the Duke of Gloucester appeared on chocolate boxes, though the Sydney Morning Herald (23 August 1934) approved of the Prince of Wales’s acting as “England’s commercial traveler”.

In arranging the 1937 Coronation, fashionable colours were matters of high policy. In the wake of the Abdication, the populace had to be encouraged to rally around the Crown. Women’s fashions were thus chosen to blend with or to be set against the red, white and blue of official decorations:

Viking-blue, a clear beige and rust were the result. Marlborough-blue, Coronation-gold, St James-rose, and Buckingham-lilac were heraldic colors designed as pastel complements to the glittering uniforms and official robes.

In 1947, the shades for the wedding of Princess Elizabeth and Prince Phillip were Lime-flower, Princess Blue, Linden and Spithead Blue. The future monarch retained her preference for pastels for the Royal Tour planned for early 1952 when she endorsed Tudor Cream, Edinburgh Rose, Pacific Yellow and Wildflower Blue. The Women’s Weekly London correspondent reported:

These colours have been sent to British fabric and accessories manufacturers and will be seen in the dress shows of London’s Big Ten. Lengths of materials in wool, silk and rayon are displayed in the Salons of the Council and from these one has an excellent idea of the colour trends of the coming season.[11]

The Coronation colours were Elizabethan Red, Marguerite Green, Princess Grey, Beau Blue and Spun Gold.[12]

In preparation for the 1954 Tour, the Colour Council’s new patron, Princess Margaret, “sponsored” Clarence Rose, Ambassador Blue and Royal Blue. The London correspondent for the Commonwealth Jeweller and Watchmaker believed that these colours would “form a perfect background to a range of pastel-coloured gemstones, including Australian opals. Already ranges of clothes and other articles in the new colours should be arriving in your stores and shops”. The writer regretted that jewellers were not as adept as other traders in “setting a fashion”.[13] Ten years later, a Melbourne hosiery maker, House of Prestige, used replicas of the Crown jewels to promote its four “Colours Royale”.[14]

A 1937 press release explained “how the standardisation of a season’s colours” had been achieved:

The council sent out its gipsy color chart months ago to Scottish spinners, who, of all manufacturers, start earliest on a new season’s goods. The spinner dyed their wools in the new colors and sent samples to weavers in Czechoslovakia.

The weavers chose their wools, wove the materials, which went to Paris, where designers, checking materials on the charts, chose lengths for new seasons’ models.

Accessories, shoe and hat makers meanwhile have dyed their leathers and fabrics by the color chart. Models and accessories travel all over the world …

Its season’s charts make it possible for you to buy French silks that will match Scottish tweeds, an English umbrella or match Viennese shoes, Czechoslovakian jewellery to tone with your evening frock, and even the sewing silk for making up your new season’s model.[15]

Knowing the colour range in advance also reduced those last-minute rushes in manufacture that involved a higher hourly rate of pay from overtime, thereby “filching the gilt from the ginger-bread”.[16]

The initiators of an Australian Colour Council in 1956 explained that their “primary aim is to co-operate with the manufacturer in an endeavour to achieve complete colour co-ordination in each particular manufacturing field”. The benefits would be: 1. reduced manufacturing costs; 2. a concise workable and economic merchandising plan; 3. “Harmonious display with greater sales appeal for retail stores”. Only after these business needs had been achieved would it be profitable to offer “[c]omplete satisfaction to the purchaser for a perfectly blended décor scientifically planned”.[17]

An Australian Colour Council did not eventuate, partly because the co-ordination of consumer sovereignty was in the hands of overseas corporations which passed seasonable colours along from head office, via Paris fashion parades. Instead of a local Colour Council, the conglomerates and industry associations enforced its intentions. For instance, in 1957, the Fibres Section of ICIANZ employed a sales promotion executive, Nancy Sanders, to play “an important part in moulding men’s tastes in suits and shirts”. According to Sanders:

There is never a spontaneous demand by the public for new materials or new fashions. Women don’t wake up in droves one morning and suddenly decide they want a shorter skirt. The desire is planted in their minds by the people whose business it is to change the fashions in fabrics and styles year by year.

Although artificial fibres lent themselves to a multitude of colours, Sanders’ employer was promoting pastel shades because the stronger shades were more expensive to produce.[18]

The increased range of tonings in artificial fabrics added to the pressure on wool which was associated with a narrower and more muted spectrum. Hence, by 1958, the Australian Wool Bureau had set up its own Wool Colour Council with representatives from the textile associations and the retail traders. The director of a chain of men’s wear stores was

pleased that for the first time so many leading Australian manufacturers had become unanimous on a promotion theme – the ‘Blues’. It would mean nothing but good generally for the trade to have a central theme around which to promote and merchandise.[19]

The Wool Board’s advisors decided on four colours for men and nine for women in the 1961 seasons.[20] They backed their choices with promotions aimed at the trade and the public, distributing 150,000 pieces of display material during the 1962 campaign, which achieved a success rate of “80 per cent of the garments selected by customers this winter were chosen on colours recommended by the Australian Wool Bureau”.[21] Next year, the Chairman of the Knitted Outerwear Section of the Melbourne Chamber of Manufacturers, Mr. A. J. Brady, enthused: “This is the best thing that ever happened to the knitwear industry”.[22] Mr Brady had overlooked how the expansion of demand rivaled the direction of choice for the accolade of “best thing”.

From 1962, the U.S. firm Pantone, began standardising colours for manufacturers. Later, it moved onto bi-annual forecasting of trends for clothes, cosmetics and industrial design, twenty-four months in advance of release. In 2002, Pantone added TheRightColor to

enable retailers to reduce the number of returns due to inaccurate color representation, as well as improve inventory tracking and replenishment strategies. In addition, the ability to monitor customer color preferences enables upselling and cross-selling, allowing the retailer to sell more product per visit.[23]

EXPLAIN THAT THIS USE IS TO EXPAND DEMAND BUT WITHIN PREFERENCES EXPRESSED BY THE BUYER. ONLY AFTER THE RANGE HAS BEEN “SOLD”.

Because Pantone services the major producers of consumer goods, its projection of trends “virtually guarantees that the universe of color will become, on schedule, a universe of products”. According to the director of marketing at KitchenAid: “Using a forecast helps you narrow down the choices, so you know where not to go”. A New York Times reporter recognised that consumers “walk into a store and see not freedom of choice, but the palettes of a year-old prediction”. In the words of the director of Pantone’s Color Institute: “These palettes are a guideline for consumers. Without them, they’re going to be too confused to buy”.[24] The concern that marketers express for customers lest they became too knowledgeable to spend is further evidence of the morality established by a free market.

Five commodity groups
1. Fabrics
WHEREFor as long as imports arrived and local factories copied every style from the United States, the fencing in of consumer choice seemed impossible. The solution would have to originate overseas. That did not seem likely.

Post-war shortages made it easy to sell what ever was on hand, in any shade. Blokes donned lime or pink socks and violet cardigans: “The men who bought them were not ‘cissies’: they couldn’t get any others”.[25] The Chartered Accountant attacked “[m]anagements who turn out goods haphazardly with the assurance that the market will be there whatever their cost in waste and inefficiency”.[26]

After the Second World War, the Draper of Australasia spelt out how the channeling of choice benefited its subscribers:

The temptation to issue a wide range of colours has been resisted as past experience, particularly during the war period, has proved that a lead in fashion can only be achieved and maintained by focusing attention on a carefully selected group of colours of outstanding merit and attractiveness.[27]

With an ending of rationing, the Draper reminded makers and merchandisers that both would profit from limiting consumer sovereignty: 

The co-ordination of colour between one material and another has obvious advantages for the manufacturer, the merchant and retailer. Stocks are not wasted, because a limited range of colours is dyed up by each branch of industry in the confident knowledge that correct matching, harmonizing or contrasting colours, are being dyed by manufacturers in other sections of the same industry. Retailers may plan ahead and ensure correlation of colour between the various articles stock in the store.[28]

A sellers’ market could not remove the need to coordinate sectors of the same industry. Green fabrics did not go well with red buttons as the director of General Plastics Ltd recognised:

An added advantage is obtained if fashion colours such as lime green, teal blues, mauves, etc., can be matched quickly and without involving heavy stocks which are risky whether carried by manufacturer, wholesaler or retailer.

The “water-clearness” of a “Perspex” button appealed “because it will tone into any colour. This is a big help when clothing manufacturers cannot order colours especially if they do not know what cloths they may be getting”.[29]

Once a buyer’s market had returned by late in 1952,[30] businesses had again to juggle their stimulating of demand with the channeling of taste.

Seasonal colours and fashions serviced the need that firms have to expand to secure economies of scale.[31] In 1955, the Colour Consultant to Monsanto Color Styling Service, Faber Firren, explained:

Economically, it keeps the business of production and merchandising humming, for the style factor alone is one of the most significant causes of obsolescences in numerous products.[32]

WHERE Manufacturers annoyed retailers by failing to match the shade of the fabric or button they supplied with that ordered from sample sheets.[33]

2. Footwear
As the Great War was ending, the Inter-State Commission discussed the impediments that the “fickleness of fashion” presented to any “standardisation of boots”.

Shoes for women had become more of a problem since skirts had risen a few centimetres to reveal their footwear.[34] A U.S. journal reported that, since 1914, “those women with any pretensions to being followers of the fashion have to buy one or two pairs of shoes not because their footwear was worn out, but in order to be up to date”.[35] Marketers encouraged women to coordinate the design and colour of their shoes with the rest of the attire:

One witness declared that women’s boots and shoes were now in the same category as millinery, and the prospect of the disappearance of ‘fashion lines’ was viewed with dismay … One manufacturer produced over 1,200 styles of boots made in his factory, and in one shop 972 distinct styles were stocked.[36]

By 1917, “The Big Movement in Colour” had contributed to this plethora.[37]

Even workmen displaying “a tendency to wear boots made from light expensive leathers, instead of the heavier, more serviceable, and economical varieties formerly worn”.[38] To bring the demand for fashionable items by men up to the level from women, stores had to promote the idea of something “different”. A reprint of an article from the U.S. of A. cautioned retail buyers:

Remember that up to the last few seasons men have not bought novelties at all and have kept to blacks and tans. Therefore you will have to depart from the given line just enough to make the element of style attractive. Avoid radical colour contrasts. Stock shoes in subdued shades which will appeal to the men as being attractive without being freakish.[39]

???????

STARTThe means to benefit from this marketing achievement had to be learnt, as can be seen from the experience of the Victorian Boot and Shoe Retailers’ Association. The industry was uncertain how best to profit from an increase in total demand. Fashion changes had forced up the costs of maintaining the range of stock.

The Association’s meeting in May 1917 discussed whether fashions could be “controlled”, either by its members or by manufacturers. An ex-president of the Association considered the “advent of fashion freaks and fancies” to be unprecedented: “Years ago our trade practically consisted of staple lines, and as traders we worked on the assurance that little risk was taken in ordering new lines”. He welcomed the new diversity, wished to control it, yet feared that such interference would be precluded by the lack of loyalty from traders to their Association. Other speakers endorsed the need to manage styles since the arrival of fashion meant that stores had to stock a larger range even among the old staples. Manufacturers no longer supplied the half-sizes that would go a good way to meet the demand for variety. Instead, volumes would have to be disposed of below cost. The storekeepers decided that responsibility for reform rested with the manufacturers. The danger there was that if the specialist retailers agreed on a range with the makers, the department stores would cut a deal with some manufacturer for other styles. The meeting decided that, though interference with fashions might be desirable, “the time is not opportune”.[40]

Automobiles
The sales effort, which included credit, helped the aggregation of capital to expand by absorbing the surplus, as the automobile again demonstrated.[41]

When the chief executive officer of General Motors, Alfred P. Sloan, joined the company in 1923, all the mass auto lines were hand-finished in enamel and varnishes. Their application added two to four weeks to the production time. General Motors had grown out of the du Pont Corporation where a laboratory in 1920 created a nitro-cellulose lacquer, later branded Duco. Next year, General Motors established a Paint and Enamel Committee, before releasing the “True Blue” Oakland in 1924. Despite technical difficulties, Duco’s “quick drying removed the most important remaining bottleneck in mass production”. A car could be finished in a single shift. A production line for 1,000 vehicles no longer required covered parking for 18,000, some eight hectares. This cost reduction proved the least profitable benefit for the car-makers from the new paint technology.[42]

By 1927, almost every U.S. American who could afford a motor vehicle either owned one or was paying one off. To overcome a bottleneck far greater than that caused by hand-painting, Sloan set up an Art and Color Section as part of the “Annual Model Change”, or planned obsolescence.[43] In the same year, Henry Ford ended production of his T-Model. In Australia, the Ford Motor Company hired the artists Sydney Ure Smith, Thea Proctor and George Lambert to devise colour schemes.[44] The Ford advertisements in Art in Australia did not mention colour as an attraction until March 1930. The style changes offered by the auto firms could not overcome the blockage to total effective demand. Excess capacity in the automobile industry compounded a deflationary cycle until 1940 when the Pentagon was happy to buy vehicles of any colour so long as they were camouflaged.

After the war, the price of an f.a.q. second-hand vehicle in Australia was often higher than the recommended retail price for a brand new one, if it could be had. The waiting time for a new Holden in May 1950 was thirty months; a year later, would-be owners at a car show found it “difficult to entice a salesman to take an order”. Conditions had tipped the other direction by May 1953 when the delay was only one week.[45] Colour at last could become the selling point.

With the promotion of the two- and three-tone cars from the early 1950s, the availability of the colour of preference clinched the deal in car yards. The Australian Motor Manual reported in January 1957 that “[o]ne of the biggest sales tools in the new car market today is a dealer’s offer to deliver any colour combination desired, probably more quickly than any other feature offered in a car”.[46] To secure custom, dealers installed repaint shops.[47] This arrangement forced the cost from the sales effort down the chain and so did not violate the logic of mass production.

DID NOT CHANNEL

House-paints
House paints were almost as scarce in 1946 as new vehicles so that builders thought themselves lucky to get military surplus. Two years later, they could not get paints of any hue because construction hd boomed while lead and oil remained scarce: “Painters complain that much hunting is necessary to finish off their contracts, while the general quality of the material offered is below standard”.[48] Shortages continued into 1951 but were acute only in remoter markets such as Western Australia and at certain times of the year, such as after the Christmas break, and for some colours.

The meeting of pent-up demand by 1952 meant that businesses thereafter had to stimulate sales. The marketing maxim became “Don’t sell paint – sell colour”.[49] Marketing managers promoted the repainting of “Emoh Ruo”, inside and out, as a perennial means to express one’s personality by remaining fashionable in accord with the strategies of the corporations. BALM set up the first “Festival of Colour” in 1955 with the Janus aims of encouraging customers to buy new paints, fabrics and furnishings and to back the “trend towards standardising colour co-ordination of components in interior decoration”.[50]

Plastics paints proved popular after Glazebrooks released “Spred Satin” in September 1953, though supplies were limited by technical difficulties and a shortage of raw materials.[51] The ease of application with PVA (polyvinyl acetates) meant that a householder could apply two coats on a room in the same day.[52] The surface could be cleaned with water and did not need stripping back to be redone with a different colour. Speed and lower labour costs encouraged the home decorator to repaint a feature wall or two as the fashion controllers managed her choice of colours.

The technologies that had made paint attractive also cut into its appeal. New building materials such as aluminum and plastics did way with the need for paints. In early 1965 the Public Relations Director of the Australian Paint Manufactures Federation grumbled that householders had a “wealth of more enjoyable pastimes”. Rather than paint the house, they took trips away in the family car or watched television. The “basic plank in our propaganda” to overcome this “general apathy to painting by house-owners” would be to establish that “colour … is vital to smart living and indicative of sophisticated, fashionable personalities”.[53]

The paint industry also perceived that profits need not depend on volume but could also be gained through margins. Higher rates could be extracted from lots of different tints rather than from oceans of cream on exterior walls. Indoors, the promotion of the feature wall and then the use of a different hue on each of the other three nudged householders into buying smaller quantities at higher prices per can. The home decorator felt it safest to overestimate the quantities needed for each wall or door panel. In addition, the paint firms marketed “Tiny Tins” of tints for touching up chairs or other accessories.[54] The expense of expressing one’s individuality as personality with a red front door and a buttercup letterbox was on the rise.

By the mid-Sixties, the mixing of tints by hardware stores had resulted in so vast a range that BALM’s retail manager feared a drop in sales: “The idea now is to initially promote a smaller, carefully selected, colour range, which will satisfy most customers without confusing them”. Only those shoppers who insisted that their sovereignty depended on full knowledge were to be shown the range in its thousands.[55]

Kitchen wares
For house-wares, the trickle of colours before 1940 had turned into a torrent after 1945. TO GT&BSo shocking were some of its manifestations that the custodians of good taste clung to the conviction that visual excesses were a passing extreme:

It is with relief and gratitude we seem to have said farewell to the crudity of ‘jazz’ patterned crockery in garish primary colours, a vogue in decoration so angular and restless as to be positively irritating, and with absolutely no sense of the serenity and charm one looks for at a tea-table.[56]

The sense of relief was ingenuous. The “repose” of many a sitting-room was already being by harassed by plastics with their redefinition of “pleasing” and “decorative”.

The time of colour appeared as a moment in the age of plastics. For the retailers of plastics goods, the explosion of colours threatened “a major inventory headache” by tying up working capital. From researching the 1956 pattern of sales, Monsanto identified a “style scale” between both retailers and their customers. For instance, self-service supermarkets, which relied on impulse purchases, did 80 per cent of their business in red and yellow. Variety stores also sold mostly red and yellow but needed eight other shades for higher priced items. Hardware outlets faced even more sophisticated tastes. Department stores could profit from the most expensive lines in pink or turquoise. Hence, inventory costs could be contained by catering for strata of buyers. The survey also found that each percentile of consumers could be led through colour preferences. The middle segment was beginning to buy pink and turquoise while the top-end of the market was already gliding towards warm neutral shades such as “sandalwood and tan”.[57]

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