PPG’s industrial coatings business has opened the Shmaze Color Design Studio sponsored by PPG Trendcast, a facility near Irvine, CA, devoted to helping manufacturers and industrial designers accelerate color design and prototype development. Richard Zoulek, PPG general manager for strategic markets, said the Shmaze Color Design Studio expands PPG’s resources as a premier coatings supplier by uniting it with the hands-on application expertise of a world-class production team.

“This new facility enables manufacturers and industrial designers from around the world to come into our workshop and walk out with production-ready parts and coatings that can run almost anywhere in the world,” he said. “For design-intensive organizations like consumer electronics companies, that process can take three to six months due to logistical challenges. With the new studio this can be reduced to days.”

Michael Shamassian, principal of the Shmaze Color Design Studio, said the facility’s core mission is problem-solving. “Lots of companies have design studios like ours, but no one has the equipment and on-site production expertise that we do, all under one roof,” he said. “We have a full-service production line with robots, tooling, molders and other equipment that enables us to work through production and quality issues in real time, and to prove the viability of a coating in a matter of hours or days.”

Viktor Sekmakas, PPG vice president, global industrial coatings, said the studio is part of PPG’s strategy to focus on ‘listen and do’ instead of ‘show and tell.’ “This facility is unique to the industry because it combines the creativity of a studio with a real-world production environment,” he said. “Customers can work directly with our experts to bring their color concepts to life, then walk right on to a production line to push and pull those ideas until they get exactly what they want. In most color design workshops, designers have to settle for something close to what they originally envisioned. There’s no settling here.”

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