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How Shepherd Color Approaches Innovation

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In our short Innovation video, we discuss how successful product innovation involves a number of factors, with the most important being the people involved, the process, and the perception of color.

Learn how Shepherd Color has spent decades researching and optimizing pigments. This dedication has enabled us to create many innovative, high performance complex inorganic color pigments, not only for the plastics, coatings and glass enamels industries, but also for technology products such as telecommunication devices.

Visit our Virtual Showroom today to view our Innovation video!

Shine Bright Like a Diamond, with StarLight

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They Say ‘Diamonds Are Forever’

Do your products shine bright like a diamond?

Diamonds, the most popular gemstone, are known to be beautiful, rare, and cherished. Often used to indicate a lifelong commitment between two people, diamonds in a ring are a symbol of love and friendship.

Holding onto this notion of forever, what if you could capture the sparkle of a diamond in your products? Shepherd Color’s StarLight® special effect pigments capture that sparkle, but keeps it alive. It gives bright sparkles to the surface that dance with the light.

Learn the key to the distinct and unique appearance of StarLight here.

How Shepherd Color is Getting It Right With Employee Engagement

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Treating people how you want to be treated ‒ operating using this golden rule.

For many companies, an investment in innovative technology is critical to survival. Many consider it the primary path to a competitive advantage. However, it would be a mistake for executives to take their eyes off the human component, according to a recent Gallup study.

The Gallup research found a disturbing trend in the global workplace: Only 15% of full-time employees consider themselves fully engaged at work, which was defined as “highly involved in and enthusiastic about their work and workplace.”

As Gallup puts it, that figure represents “a stunning amount of wasted potential, given that business units in the top quartile of our global employee engagement database are 17% more productive and 21% more profitable than those in the bottom quartile.”

Employee engagement also is a contributing factor to social sustainability — the company’s overall relationship with people. Companies that score high with social sustainability are ethical in their treatment of employees, clients, and the community.

An inside look at The Shepherd Color Company, where it’s not uncommon for employees to stay for 10, 20, 30 years or more, demonstrates the power of its socially sustainable culture.

Shepherd Color President John Marten said treatment of employees has been among the company’s differentiators. “The owners have always operated by the golden rule — treating people how they would want to be treated,” Marten said. “We give our employees opportunities and we give them the tools to do their jobs well.”

Read on to find out how we build a foundation that supports a social sustainable culture in the workplace by downloading the rest of this article.

Shepherd Color’s Commitment to Sustainable Sourcing

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Ensuring raw material suppliers are obtaining sources in a responsible way.

During the past five to six years, Shepherd Color, like many manufacturing companies worldwide, has been increasingly focused on the sourcing of materials as another critical sustainability factor.

Chris Collesel, Purchasing Manager, is responsible for purchasing raw materials, bulk chemicals, and packaging components as well as laboratory and office supplies. In that role, Collesel focuses heavily on ethical and responsible sourcing.

This includes all aspects of sustainability from an environmental and social impact. “It has really changed significantly over the last several years,” Collesel said. “We have become more knowledgeable and more thoughtful about how we source our raw materials — not just what we make with our product but what we bring in the door.”

Read more on how we source our materials by downloading the rest of this article.

How Shepherd Color Drills Down Into the Layers of Sustainability

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Just a few decades ago, sustainability seemed to be a fairly straightforward concept. It was initially defined as the ability of biological systems to endure, and remain diverse and productive. Fast forward to today and the concept of sustainability has become increasingly complex. Sustainability can be achieved through numerous avenues, including protecting the environment, acting ethically toward people, and adopting sound economic practices.

Throughout its 100+ year history, The Shepherd Color Company has been naturally pursuing sustainability. It’s an outcome of the company’s goal to do what’s right when it comes to people and the environment.

“It goes back to one of the Shepherd family’s core values,” said Mark Ryan, Marketing Manager. “We work for long term impact. It forms a lot of the decisions that we make.” “Our products inherently have long life cycles,” Ryan added. “When we bring out a new product, we are looking at it from multiple viewpoints, including regulatory and human safety, both from making it internally and its use in the field.”

Learn the critical ways that Shepherd Color achieves sustainability as part of its manufacturing operations by downloading the rest of this article.

Shepherd Color Innovation Leads to Higher Levels of Sustainability

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Although sustainability has been steadily gaining traction as a global concern in recent years, many leading manufacturers have been investing in sustainable practices for decades.

The Shepherd Color Company is among those manufacturers investing in sustainable practices. “You could say we were sustainable before sustainable was cool,” said Mark Ryan, Marketing Manager, and a 20-year Shepherd employee.

“Shepherd Color’s investment in sustainable production predates even my time with the company,” Ryan said. “Largely because of the owner’s philosophy to do what’s right. As a result, sustainable practices have been developed both in response to their focus on treating people ethically as well as the environment.”

Shepherd Color’s focus on sustainability has evolved over the past several decades — to support their own values as well as respond to customer’s needs and demands.

Learn more about how we achieve these demands by downloading the rest of this article.