6 Jun 2005
GE’s Customer Innovation Centre Celebrates Five Years of Dazzling Colour Featuring Visualfx* Resins and ColorXpress* Services
BERGEN OP ZOOM, THE NETHERLANDS — May 18, 2005 — After five years of creating more than 33,000 colourful materials solutions to match a broad range of customer designs, experts at GE’s Customer Innovation Centre here have expanded and honed their technical, commercial, and design knowledge to help customers enhance their competitive edge.
The Customer Innovation Centre, one of three such global centres operated by GE Advanced Materials, provides colour and special effects expertise and services to customers across the company’s entire product spectrum. Among the offerings are user-friendly online tools, express colour-matching capabilities, unique special effects, and the opportunity for customers to visit and utilize the facility’s expanding services.
The Customer Innovation Centre is a global hub of GE’s Visualfx* portfolio of resins – which can be customized with a host of special effects and colour variations – and ColorXpress* Services, GE’s colour-matching and management service that delivers fast, precise colour selection.
Visualfx resins, including GE’s Lexan*, Cycoloy*, Geloy*, Xylex*, Xenoy* and Cycolac* resins, not only provide more than 33,000 dynamic colour variants, loadings, and derivatives, but also 36 special effects such as marbling, sparkles, frost, smoke and opalescence — 11 of which are unique in the global plastics industry. ColorXpress Services include a library of 20,000 standard resin colours and offers custom matching to a sample in seven days or less. Based on customer needs, the Customer Innovation Centre develops more than 2,000 new custom colours each year.
Online Tools and Facility Visits
To make it easier and more convenient for customers to interact with the Customer Innovation Centre GE has put many of its colour services online. The company offers two websites – gecolorexpress.com and geaesthetics.com – through which customers can request colour and special effect chips, submit colour-matching orders, and search for colours numerically using Lab, RGB, or RAL codes.
Customers who wish to work with the Customer Innovation Centre staff in person can request a facility visit. During such visits, GE can offer the expertise of its colour team to inform the customer on different colours, effects, and design possibilities, and then proceed to do on-the-spot colour matches. According to Yvette Bogaert, manager of the GE Advanced Materials Customer Innovation Centre, “This is true imagination at work - what the customer can imagine, the GE Customer Innovation Centre team tries to produce in the same day.
“We’re proud to mark our fifth anniversary with a greatly expanded level of capabilities to meet the evolving colour needs of our customers,” Bogaert continued. “The centre is an industry-leading facility with unique offerings and one of the largest global selections of colours and effects. When it comes to colour services, our experienced staff excels in speed, accuracy, and creativity,” she said.
Reader enquiries
GE PlasticsPlasticslaan 1
4600 AC Bergen op Zoom
Netherlands
Helen Vandebovenkamp
helen.vandebovenkamp@ge.com
Tel: +31 164 29 20 97
Fax: +31 164 29 10 66
Netherlands
Notes for editors
About GE Advanced Materials
GE Advanced Materials (www.geadvancedmaterials.com) is a world leader in providing high-technology material solutions. Headquartered in Pittsfield, Mass., its businesses include Plastics, Silicones, Quartz, Automotive, Specialty Film & Sheet, Polymershapes, and Sealants and Adhesives.
GE (NYSE:GE) is a diversified technology, media, and financial services company dedicated to creating products that make life better. From aircraft engines and power generation to financial services, medical imaging, television programming, and plastics, GE operates in more than 100 countries and employs more than 300,000 people worldwide. For more information, visit the company's website at www.ge.com.
* Visualfx, ColorXpress, Lexan, Cycoloy, Geloy, Xylex, Xenoy and Cycolac are trademarks of General Electric Company.
Related images
GE Advanced Materials’ Customer Innovation Centre in Bergen op Zoom, The Netherlands
After five years of creating more than 33,000 colourful materials solutions to match a broad range of customer designs, experts at GE’s Customer Innovation Centre here have expanded and honed their technical, commercial, and design knowledge to help customers enhance their competitive edge. The Customer Innovation Centre, one of three such global centres operated by GE Advanced Materials, provides colour and special effects expertise and services to customers across the company’s entire product spectrum. Among the offerings are user-friendly online tools, express colour-matching capabilities, unique special effects, and the opportunity for customers to visit and utilize the facility’s expanding services.
Editorial enquiries
Helen Vandebovenkamp
GE Plastics
Folke Markestein
Marketing Solutions NV
fmarkestein@marketingsolutions.be
Jim Allison
AH&M Marketing Communications