“In this current retail climate, thoughtful and creative uses of color are that much more important,” said Laura Pressman, vice president of fashion, home and interiors, in a statement.

These colors palettes are meant for women’s wear, menswear, active wear, cosmetics, lifestyle, industrial design and graphics.

Furthermore the colors featured in its View Colour Planner should look really familiar. Inspiration stems from surrounding environments, be it the ground below or the sky above, if not ourselves:

• To create an Urban Field as described, natural hues should be used: “macrobiotic tones, dehydrated and preserved greens, and toasted nuances.”
• What Mimetic is imitating is a mosaic itself. Colors presented in small doses collectively make sense once analyzed from a distance.
• Keep mosaics in mind also for recreating Pantone’s Byzantine theme. The rest of it draws from old architecture and imperial palaces.
• Its Deconstructing/Reconstructing theme also revolves around the past, though this strictly deals with basic colors: traditional navy, bottle green, pillar box red, mid grey, ecru.
• “Deep, deep darks” serve as the Molecular foundation, as they are meant to bring together the other facets of the palette.
• In Pantone’s Universe, black also serves as the backdrop for saturated, layered colors “studded with starry accents.”
• To create an Urban Field as described, natural hues should be used: “macrobiotic tones, dehydrated and preserved greens.”
• Multiple Identity plays off of human bodies rather than celestial ones. Consider the “physical changes in skin” and “eye color after tears or no sleep” as suggested.
• The colors of Neuro Networks include benevolent greys, transparent blues, skin beiges, aura mauve and immaterial yellow. In this case, human bodies only serve as half of the inspiration, while the spirituality within provides the rest. Both can be unified with either “subtle high-tech or elegant raw aspects.”

For more information about Pantone’s latest View Colour Planner, visit its Web site.

Predicting the Future
How can you know when the peak sales are going to drop off? You can’t predict the future can you? Of course we can’t predict the future, but we can learn from our past.

Retailers keep track of what happened previous years to know how to effectively sell this year. Managers order enough calculators not only to get them through the back-to-school sale, but also the first few weeks of school. They know how to plan for this because of what happened last year.

The same is true with eBay. If you could see what happened last year with calculator sales, you could know when sales are going to start to drop-off.

With a market research tool like HammerTap, you can know what happened last year. With information like that, you can in a sense predict the future.

I used HammerTap to research calculator sales last year. I researched calculator sales for four weeks starting on August 23, 2006.

Below are the results by-week. Pay attention to how the Listing Success Rate (LSR) and Average Sales Price (ASP) change during the four weeks of sales.

The Dropping-Off Point
So when do sales drop off? Sales during Week 2, August 31 thru September 6 were the highest in both LSR and ASP. During this week, you can sell the most calculators for the highest price possible.

After September 6, the Average Sales Price drops rapidly. In one week you go from $66.85 to $53.95, a difference of $12.90. This is a huge drop in profit. While sales are steady at 77%, you are not making nearly as much per calculator.

Depending on your cost of the product, September 6 is your drop-off point. Even though sales are still high (that’s your Listing Success Rate) you may not be making enough money on each sale to cover your costs.

What’s your strategy then? Try to sell all of your calculators during Week 2 above to increase both your success rate and selling price. Selling during this week is going to maximize your profits for this product during the back-to-school season.

However, each product is different, and this is just one example. In order to maximize the sales of your products during seasonal and holiday trends like this one, you really have two options: 1) Try and guess when the optimal time to sell is or 2) Use a research tool like HammerTap.

Wholesalers are finding that in order to properly compete with e-commerce sites and online specialty shops, they have to source their products much earlier than in the past. It is true that Christmas comes in July–at least to the wholesaler. It is not uncommon to plan four or five months ahead of the holiday season. Of course, this doesn’t mean that buyers should only buy product during the pre-season window. In fact, merchandise is traditionally cheaper within the first thirty to sixty days after the holiday has passed, so for wholesalers looking for Christmas product, the best time to purchase might just be in January and February, when supplies are being clearanced. Some suppliers offer seasonal merchandise at a discount when purchased out-of-season, so it is best for companies to research that possibility before committing to a full-price purchase.

The worst time to source seasonal products is the thirty days before a holiday. As an example, if a company has not purchased its Halloween supplies before October 1, they will pay twice its intrinsic value. Bricks and mortar stores like Wal-Mart take advantage of this window to raise the price of their seasonal goods.

If sourcing products was as simple as studying the calendar, all wholesalers would meet with the same success selling seasonal merchandise. As it is, buyers must consider seasonal trends. What might be popular one year can fizzle out by the following season, leaving unsold merchandise all but worthless. Wholesalers have to play clairvoyant when trying to determine what, of all the products they can purchase, will be the most popular during the coming season. The goal is to purchase more of the popular product and less of those that have uncertain future. Fortunately, the clairvoyant has some help.

Online marketing firms such as Oneupweb conduct research that is useful to wholesalers and other sellers. Through the holiday season, Oneupweb keeps track of conversion rates, sales and web site traffic. By using Yahoo, MSN or Google, the firm can predict what is currently selling and what might be selling in the future. Sites such as Clickbank can also help wholesalers, because it provides buyers with information on a product’s popularity with other wholesalers, retail sellers or resellers. If others are making a profit from a certain product, chances are that there are still pieces of the profit pie available.

The Internet is a wholesaler’s best friend, not just because many of their sales are generated from e-commerce sites and through product web pages. The Internet helps generate sales for wholesalers in other ways:

* Through pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, which generate impulse buys
* By giving wholesalers a chance to evaluate online catalogs for an idea of what is selling
* By allowing access to Google and Yahoo page rankings, in order to see what sites are making the most in sales
* Through researching email marketing campaigns. By studying the subject of bulk messages, wholesalers can determine what products garner the marketing attention, and thus the largest probability of success.
* By providing resource web pages such as Quantcast , which can track traffic on a company’s website, and simple resources such as search engine rankings, which can show wholesalers what companies have the largest audience.

Tracking seasonal trends doesn’t guarantee a wholesale company vast riches, but by studying the market and sourcing products at the right time, wholesalers have a chance to capitalize on a consumer-market.