Van Leeuwen Ice Cream

The brief

Van Leeuwen's shops are built around color, and the colors come from the ice cream. The design team wanted wall tile in the exact Pantone of a flavor, glossy like a glaze on a pint, in a format they could roll out shop after shop across the country.

What we supplied

Made-to-order glazed ceramic in custom colors: Mulberry, Praline Buttercake, Marionberry and Vanilla Bean among them, in 3 x 12, 3 x 10, 4 x 4 and 2 x 8 inch formats, plus 1 x 1 and 2 x 2 inch blends for floors. Thousands of square feet per color, held as stock for the next openings.

How it came together

Each color started as a Pantone code. Our partner factory developed the glaze, we sent strike-offs to the design team, and the shade was approved against the pint before production. Van Leeuwen liked the fine hairline crackle in the glaze, which reads like ice, so it stayed. Orders ran about ten weeks from approval, and we delivered to the company's warehouse so tile was on hand for each new shop, with box and pallet counts worked out so their team could plan every store.

The result

Dozens of scoop shops in New York, Chicago, Virginia and beyond, in tile no one else has, and a repeatable program: when a new flavor needs a wall, the color is developed the same way. The same process is now our custom-color program, open to any designer with a Pantone or paint swatch.