Pantone - Fashion Company Profile
Pantone is the color company founded in Carlstadt, New Jersey in 1962 - the business behind the PANTONE MATCHING SYSTEM Lawrence Herbert created in 1963, today a subsidiary of X-Rite inside Veralto Corporation, and still the standard language the fashion industry uses to specify color from designer to factory.
Company Snapshot
- Status
- Operating - the color-standard company, a subsidiary of X-Rite, Incorporated
- Type
- Private - subsidiary of X-Rite, part of Veralto Corporation (NYSE: VLTO), which was spun off from Danaher in 2023; X-Rite acquired Pantone in October 2007
- Headquarters
- Carlstadt, New Jersey, United States
- Founded
- 1962, in Carlstadt, New Jersey; Lawrence Herbert created the PANTONE MATCHING SYSTEM in 1963
Company Profile
Current color systems, books and digital tools are on the Pantone website, linked above. There is no Amazon or eBay shop box on this page: Pantone sells professional color systems and licensed products for design and manufacturing, not a consumer fashion line of its own in any meaningful marketplace sense. The ownership line above the system has changed since the detailed record on the history page was written. X-Rite acquired Pantone in October 2007; X-Rite itself was acquired by Danaher in 2012; and in October 2023 Danaher spun its environmental and applied solutions businesses, X-Rite and Pantone among them, into the standalone public company Veralto Corporation (NYSE: VLTO). Through every change of parent, the product the apparel industry specifies - a numbered color that a designer, a dye house and a retailer can all read the same way - has stayed the same.
The history kept here begins in 1963, when Lawrence Herbert, Pantone's founder, created an innovative system for identifying, matching and communicating colors to solve the problems associated with producing accurate color matches in the graphic arts community. His insight was that the spectrum is seen and interpreted differently by each individual, and that insight led to the PANTONE MATCHING SYSTEM, a book of standardized color in fan format. A fan book sounds humble, but it replaced private judgment with a shared numbered reference, and everything Pantone became follows from that replacement: once a color has a number, it can be specified in a purchase order, checked at a dye house and defended at a quality inspection without the two parties ever standing in the same room.
Pantone History
The earlier record for this company - its history, past brand line-ups, figures and photographs from the periods described - is kept on a separate page for historical reference.
Pantone History & Historical Profile →Common Questions
Who owns Pantone now?
Pantone is a subsidiary of X-Rite, Incorporated, which is part of Veralto Corporation (NYSE: VLTO). X-Rite acquired Pantone in October 2007, Danaher acquired X-Rite in 2012, and Danaher spun the business into Veralto in October 2023.
When was Pantone founded?
In 1962, in Carlstadt, New Jersey. Its founder Lawrence Herbert created the PANTONE MATCHING SYSTEM in 1963, a book of standardized color in fan format, to solve the problem of accurate color matching.
Why is there no shop box on this page?
Pantone is a business-to-business color company: its fashion products are professional color systems, swatch books and digital tools sold for design and manufacturing use, so this page links the official Pantone website instead of consumer marketplace listings.
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