Just The Right Color Purple
This has nothing to do with Oprah. It’s about the color of our Lockers….and our vans….and our website. I mean, if you’re going to call yourself, “The purple place for storing your vacation stuff,” you’d better get your color purple right!
That sounds easy, I know, but like just about everything else with this new business, sounding easy doesn’t make it so.
But just how complicated can choosing a color be? Come on now! Well, read on.
First there was the issue of just what the color should be. We didn’t start out with purple. In fact, I don’t think we started out with a color at all. That didn’t last forever because at some point we needed to show what the Lockers looked like. And then the search was on. What about shades of red and green? There was a really deep red I recall looking good
And then somehow, the Locker came out a sort of yellowy-orange. I never really liked it but other people did.
And then there was turquoise which I really did like but I must admit I thought it might be trendy. You know, it looks OK now but five years from now people are asking what in the hell we were thinking when we chose turquoise.
And then one day I was riding on a bus surrounded by a bunch of people on vacation having fun. And, you know what? The seat I was sitting on was purple. So we had a Locker rendered in purple just to see what it looked like. Love at first sight!
At about this time, Brian came on board and I told him that one of the things we needed to decide on was the Locker color and I showed him the gallery. No question in his mind. Purple.
Now you might think that was it. I did. But then I don’t think either of us realized that there were about 4 zillion shades of purple. And let me tell you, we started looking at magazines, cars, and even light poles, you name it. And all we saw was different shades of purple—and none of them was the right one. And it was about this time that we realized that computer screens can not be depended upon to accurately display colors and we also discovered a company that specializes in colors, Pantone. They specialize is colors and make these neat accordion looking charts that every color of every rainbow. So off we went, looking and comparing colors in different lights to finally find the perfect shade of purple that would become Owner’s Locker Purple. It had to be bright, cheery, fun and needed to sort of say “vacation.” It’s Pantone 267 C. And you can go to their website, www.pantone.com, do a search and see for yourself (or you can look at the site, or your own purple Locker or our van the next time you’re in Orlando!)
I think what really sealed the decision to use purple for our color came was a conversation I had with one of my 15 year old twins. When Libby saw the van, she said, “good pun, dad.”
And, I said, “what??”
“’The purple place for storing your vacation stuff’—that’s a really cute pun.”
And, I said, “what pun, Libby?”
“Well, you say ‘purple place’ but you really mean PERFECT place…it’s a pun.”
Well, it wasn’t until just now…thanks, Libs!”
“How about an increase in your allowance?”
JDVM
www.ownerslocker.com
