“Can We Just Change the Colour?”
“Can we just change the colour?”
Six weeks into development, that question isn’t about colour anymore.
It’s about whether your product development process can handle change without turning it into delays, extra cost, and a very awkward conversation with your factory.
Because at this point, nothing in a product exists in isolation.
The new colourway needs a new dye lot.
The new dye lot has a different lead time.
That lead time pushes the delivery date.
The delivery date misses the launch window.
And suddenly, the margin you spent three months building no longer applies.
Every decision is connected — to lead times, to costs, to delivery dates, to margin.
Change one thing, and something else moves.
Sometimes that movement is manageable.
Other times it quietly derails the entire launch.
The difference isn’t the change itself.
Because the change request will happen — on every project, in every business, at every scale.
A designer sees something better.
A client changes their mind.
A buyer spots an opportunity.
A founder has a new idea in the shower.
The question is whether your process makes the impact visible before you say yes.
The chain reaction
Let me walk through a few scenarios.
“Can we make it slightly bigger?”
A gift box. The client wants it 2cm wider to fit an additional insert. Two centimetres. Barely noticeable.
But the box is die-cut. The die has already been made — that’s a £200-400 tooling cost you’ve already paid. A new size means a new die. It also means the product inside now moves differently in the box, so the internal side walls need redesigning. And the tissue paper that was already cut to size? Doesn’t fit anymore.
Two centimetres just cost you three weeks and the price of a new die.
That doesn’t mean the answer is no. It means the answer is: “Yes — here’s what it involves, here’s what it costs, here’s how it affects the timeline. Do you still want to make that change?”
“Can we change the finish?”
A ceramic jug. The designer sees a similar product with a matte finish and wants to switch from gloss. Aesthetic preference. Completely understandable.
But gloss and matte are different glazes with different firing requirements. The factory quoted based on the gloss schedule. The matte finish shows fingerprints more visibly, which changes the packaging requirements. And the colour approved in gloss will look darker in matte — so the colour needs re-approving too.
A finish swap just reopened sampling.
But maybe the matte version is genuinely better. Maybe it’s worth the extra sample round. The point isn’t to resist the change — it’s to make sure everyone knows what they’re agreeing to.
“Can we move the logo 1cm to the left?”
A printed product — a notebook, a tote bag, a piece of packaging. The logo position shifts by 1cm.
If it’s screen printed, that might mean re-making the screen. If it’s embroidered, the digitised file needs updating and re-testing. If the product is already in production, the factory has to stop, reset, and restart — and they’ll charge for the downtime. If the logo position interacts with a fold or a closure, 1cm might mean the logo is partially hidden when the product is assembled.
One centimetre. Three conversations with the factory, a revised proof, and a week you didn’t have.
But the answer might be simpler than you think. If production hasn’t started, it’s a conversation. If it has, the better question might be: can this change wait for the next run instead of disrupting this one?
“Actually, can we go back to the original?”
This is the one that makes product developers want to cry.
Three rounds of changes. Each one discussed, priced, sampled, approved. The product’s already been photographed for the campaign. The buyer has seen it. And then: ‘Actually, I think the first version was better.’
Except the first version’s materials are no longer in stock. The factory has already adjusted their production schedule. The packaging was updated to match version three. Going “back to the original” is a new change, not a rewind. It carries the same cost and timeline impact as any other revision — possibly more, because everyone assumed that decision was made.
Going backwards is never free. Which is exactly why locking decisions at the right stage matters — not to prevent changes, but to make sure that when a direction is confirmed, everyone can move forward with confidence.
The real cost isn’t the invoice
The direct costs are obvious — new samples, new tooling, factory charges for changes mid-production. Those show up on invoices.
The indirect costs are where the real damage lives:
Time. Every change restarts a clock somewhere. A new sample takes 2-3 weeks. A revised proof takes a week. Stack three ‘quick’ changes and you’ve lost 6-8 weeks you didn’t have.
Supplier trust. Factories plan around your decisions. They book production capacity for you based on your confirmed specs and timelines. When you change those specs after approval, you’re telling them their planning can’t rely on your sign-offs. And while you’re going back and forth on a colour, the factory has other clients waiting. Your production slot gets reassigned, and when you’re finally ready, you’re at the back of the queue.
Do it enough and they start building in buffers — longer lead times, higher prices to cover the risk, or simply deprioritising your orders because you’re harder to work with than their other clients. A manufacturer who feels like a partner will tell you when something’s going wrong. A manufacturer who’s been burned by late changes will just quote you higher next time and say nothing.
Focus. Every change requires someone to assess the impact, communicate with the factory, update the spec sheet, revise the cost sheet, adjust the timeline. But it doesn’t stop at the factory. If the product has changed, does the sales team know? Has the buyer been told? Is the marketing team still working from the right images? Three unnecessary revisions on one product can delay development on everything else in the pipeline — and create problems in departments that had no idea anything had changed.
Decision quality. When people know they can change things later, they make weaker decisions earlier. “We’ll finalise the colour at the next stage” turns into “we’ll decide when we see the production sample.” The decision doesn’t get better with delay — it just gets more expensive to make.
What actually works
I’m not going to pretend the solution is “never change anything.” Products evolve through development. Changes are part of the process — sometimes they make the product significantly better, and the job is to enable that, not block it.
The difference is between changes that are part of development and changes that undermine it. And the way you tell the difference is by having a system that makes the cost and impact of any change visible before anyone commits to it.
Here’s what I’ve seen work:
Lock decisions in stages, not all at once. You don’t need to finalise everything on day one. But you do need to know which decisions are locked at which stage. Colour is locked after design review. Materials are locked after sample approval. Dimensions are locked after production samples. Once a decision is locked, reopening it isn’t banned — it just requires a conscious conversation about the trade-off, not a casual request over email.
Make the cost visible. When someone asks to change a colour, it’s on you to come back with the full picture — not just ‘yes’ or ‘no,’ but what it actually means. ‘Yes — it’ll cost £300 in new samples, push delivery by three weeks, and we’ll miss the wholesale deadline.’ That changes the conversation entirely. It’s no longer a colour question. It’s a business decision. And people make good business decisions when they have the right information in front of them.
Come with options, not obstacles. This is the bit I think matters most. The answer to a change request should never just be “that’s expensive” or “we can’t do that.” It should be: “We can do that — here’s what it takes. Or we could do this alternative, which gets you 90% of the way there at half the cost and no timeline impact. Or we could make the change on the next production run instead of this one.”
Giving someone choices feels completely different from telling them they can’t have what they want. And nine times out of ten, when people see the options laid out clearly, they make a sensible decision without anyone having to say no.
Build in a change request process. This sounds corporate and heavy. It doesn’t have to be. It can be as simple as: any change after sample approval gets written down, impact-assessed — cost, time, supplier implications — and signed off before action is taken. No committee. No bureaucracy. Just a pause between “can we change this?” and “yes, done.”
The pause is where the money is saved.
Know your suppliers well enough to know what’s actually feasible. Not every change is equally disruptive across every factory. A supplier you’ve worked with for years, who understands your process and trusts you, can often absorb things that would be a hard no from a new relationship. That’s why investing in supplier relationships before you need them urgently isn’t a luxury — it’s operational infrastructure.
Why timing changes everything
A colour change at the concept stage costs nothing. A colour change at the design review costs a conversation. A colour change after sample approval costs a new sample, 2-3 weeks, and a supplier relationship that just got slightly harder.
The same decision, at three different moments, with three completely different price tags.
Most late changes don’t come from new information. They come from decisions that weren’t quite finalised when they should have been — a colour that didn’t feel right, a measurement that still had a question mark over it, a stakeholder sign-off that hadn’t been chased. Not because anyone was careless. Because it felt too early to commit and then suddenly it was too late to change without it costing real money.
The skill isn’t preventing changes. It’s creating a process where decisions get made at the right moment, where the cost of changing them is transparent, and where everyone involved has the information they need to make a good call — quickly, honestly, and without surprises.
That’s what the product development process looks like when it’s working properly. Not saying no. Not complaining about late changes. Building the system that means the right conversations happen at the right time, so that when someone asks “can we just change the colour?” — you already know exactly what to tell them.
