Advice on merchandise colour print

What would be the proper method in guiding clients and applying colors in Ai which will be used in merchandise printing such as a water tumbler (plastic material)?
Previously did give to printing company a Pantone code (369U), but somehow when it comes to plastic or clothing, the color turns out different.

Does it maybe look more like 369C because there is no uncoated plastic or the colors are off because the printing company simply chooses something similar without telling you because their process doesnā€™t support Pantone colors?

Quite honestly, that is a question for the plastic company.

Would they prefer a Pantone Uncoated color (wihich is a whole pet peeve of mine re: uncoated color matching)

Or would they prefer a Pantone Plastics number? There is such a thing and it is darn expensive to buy the reference set.

Or do they have a proprietary color palette that you can select from that would be ā€˜close enoughā€™ to your intent.

As @PrintDriver mentioned, you can get Pantone plastic chips.

My experience with Pantone Plastic has been, if you arenā€™t ordering 1000lbs of plastic, donā€™t even try it. Your mileage may vary but custom colors always equal large runs. Iā€™d check to see what stock colors are offered first.

If it should match Pantone 369U then it should match that.
As a printing company they could map that colour or tweak it to match your referenced colour.

Thatā€™s a huge miss from them in my opinion.
If someone specified a Pantone reference to match then thatā€™s what I would match.

Iā€™m not expecting clients or executives to understand colour models. If their brand colour is Pantone XXXX C or U or whatever - then I get that pantone book out and make sure it matches as closely as possible to that.

For me - thatā€™s part of the job. Huge miss from the printers.

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Pantone also has Textile books. Again, custom dye lots = large runs of fabrics. You can get short run dye sub type stuff though. Then it will depend if you are in the US or Europe whether the Pantone color matches C or U. In the US, everything is standardized to Coated. The few times Iā€™ve ordered from Europe, they say ā€œfabric is ā€˜uncoatedā€™ stockā€ (shrug)
Get a proof.

I donā€™t think the OP is talking about pad printing on the tumbler. I think itā€™s the tumbler plastic color itself, which is not printed, but batch mixed and mold injected. Custom = large numbers of tumblers and they need to find out what the manufacturer has available for a matching system.

sometimes it is straight up Pantone Coated. Sometimes itā€™s RAL. Sometimes you pick whatever on their available stock colors is closest (or complimentary) to what you want to do.

We just did a custom run of plastic sheet stock. 500 sheets 4ā€™x8ā€™ minimum order.

Ah yeh I got that. Iā€™m just saying they should have copped it and either queried it or matched it.

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