Barbie Pink

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"There is no excuse for being boring."

There was that time my wife pointed out something I’d completely missed. In business I mean. Her tiny nudge lead to a series of issues we had to solve and almost flipped our entire business model upside down. Classic case of outsider brilliance...

But the real gem? My eldest daughter. She tagged along with me to work in the Netherlands one day to see what her director dad did for a living—not exactly edge-of-your-seat stuff. So, I took her to the only lively department: the design team, where folks juggled textiles and colors.

My daughter, somewhere between 7 and 10 years old (timelines aren’t my strong suit), declared the place boring within ten minutes. So, I introduced her to Jan, our gentle, older product developer. He showed her his "novelty" carpet for young people. She looked at it, shrugged, and called it ugly and boring. Jan tried to win her over with talk of shiny fibers and unique textures. She looked at him like he was speaking Martian. “Wouldn’t you want this in your bedroom?” he asked. “It’s just boring carpet, and the colors are ugly. For old people.” Ouch.

Jan showed her more colors, asking her to pick one. She sighed deeply, pointed to the least offensive one, and muttered, “This one’s the least ugly.” Jan, trying to stay optimistic, noted the color number like it was a revelation. She looked at him and then at me. “Colors have numbers?” she asked. Jan thought he had an opening and said, “Fascinating, right?” “No,” she said firmly, “that’s just dumb. A color isn’t a number.”

She was the Voice of the Customer, but Jan obviously wasn’t thrilled and didn't want to listen. He shot me a look suggesting I should be embarrassed. I wasn’t. I could see my daughter had an exciting idea that she wanted to share, but Jan dismissed her as an impolite, know-it-all kid. So she shut down and her creative idea had been killed.

Or could have been killed. My daughter didn't give up.: later that day, back home, she and her sister brought me a piece of paper with hand-drawn color swatches: pink, light and dark green, light and dark blue, bright red, yellow, orange, black, and white. They’d written: NOT BORING. And: color isn’t a number.

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“Give this to Jan,” my oldest said. “This is what my sister, my friends and I would want in our rooms. No old people colors. Will you show it to Jan tomorrow? And tell him colors have names. Like Barbie Pink and Racecar Red.”

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You don’t argue with your daughters, especially when they are being creative and honest. I said, “Yes, of course.” That night, I slept poorly. I’d said yes, and now they thought we’d actually do it. But I knew better. Carpets had never come in such colors for a reason. People bought beige. Green was beige-ish, and blue was too. Colors had always had numbers, why change that?

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Jan shot down the idea the next day. “I’ve been doing this for 35 years,” he said, “and I’m not letting a kid tell me what to do. This is a stupid, childish idea. Have you lost your senses, Rik?”

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But a few days later, Jan waltzed into my office with a bunch of vibrant carpet samples: pink, black, white, bright light and dark green, bright light and dark blue, orange, red, black, white, and… beige. I stared at them, feeling oddly moved. They were different. “I showed these to my granddaughter,” Jan said, “and she loved them.” I tried to speak, but he cut me off. “It touches you, doesn’t it? It touched me too. That’s why we should call it Touché.” He had a slogan: “There is no excuse for being boring.” He planned to go international with it, saying, “Color is not a number.” He showed me samples named Barbie Pink, Snow White, Racecar Red, Curious Orange... “What do you think?” The only thing I could think of was the superpower of curisoity and creativity and the context for that: ‘psychological safety’—a crucial factor. Jan never would have realized this with his old mindset and my daughter had been shut down by him. I also learned that with an old mindset you don't touch the hearts of future generation buyers.

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The rest is history. Touché became an instant hit, bringing color into the beige, dull world of carpets. Dealers loved it, used it in displays, the press picked it up, and interior design shows on Dutch TV ran with it. The collection was quickly picked up by major international distributors. We had but one 'tiny' problem: we never expected this massive success, so we and our yarn supplier had to hustle to keep up. It was tough, but the kind of tough you want when running a business—we grew too fast.

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And my daughters? They got to choose a color and had their rooms done in Barbie Pink. Plus, they earned their dad’s eternal gratitude. And they too grew too fast.