“Our mission is to inspire joy and meaningful human connection through the power of colour and art,” says Tina Malhotra, who was appointed Color Factory’s CEO in November 2021 after serving the previous three years as the attraction‘s chief experience officer.
Founded in 2017 as a pop-up in San Francisco, Color Factory currently has two permanent US sites, in New York City and Houston, Texas. A third, in Chicago’s Willis Tower, launches this June.
“Not many companies have a mission to bring joy to the world, at a time where we need it more than ever before,” says Malhotra. “It’s a very special thing to be in charge of and we take it very seriously.”
Within each location, visitors are invited to experience the joy of colour through interactive installations, immersive rooms and carefully curated moments. Whilst Color Factory itself operates on a for-profit basis, the experience’s creators collaborate with artists, institutions, nonprofits and brand partners to curate the content inside.
Experiences to engage all the senses (not just sight)
“Colour is a universal language. It has a unique and powerful ability to impact moods, elicit emotions and tell stories,” says Malhotra.
It’s therefore surprising a museum dedicated to colour has never been done before. “I don’t believe it has,” says Color Factory’s CEO. “But certainly there are exhibits that focus on colour.”
An example would be Color Factory’s own collaboration with the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum in New York.
Every hue represented at Color Factory is paired with a sensory experience to unleash the power and impact of colour. Those experiences aim to awaken natural curiosity and encourage uninhibited play. Even for grown-ups. Especially for grown-ups. Whilst there are core experiences common across locations, no two Color Factory outlets are the same.
“We always take inspiration from the city,” says Malhotra. “The architecture, the people, the neighbourhoods, the symbols. For example, in Chicago, the colour for our ball pit is going to be green. That takes inspiration from the city’s awesome St Patrick’s Day tradition, where they dye the river green.
“We have a room in Houston based upon memories tied to certain senses. So if you are smelling grass you are automatically thinking of the colour green. There is a lot of scientific exploration of colour, and we are showcasing that in our spaces.”
To tease their taste buds, guests are also given edible treats from local partners, included in the ticket price.
Tracing the roots of Color Factory
Oh Happy Day, a group of San Francisco-based artists and creatives, founded Color Factory in 2017. Their 12,000 square feet downtown offering lasted nine months. Then:
“People spoke, they wanted it to stay open for longer and longer,” says Malhotra. “The founding team realised maybe they had captured lightning in a bottle.”
One of the founders, Alison Piepmeyer remains as Color Factory’s chief marketing officer. Others have moved on as the newer outlets have launched.
Malhotra joined with the opening of Color Factory New York in August 2018. As CEO, she now oversees a senior leadership team made up of 70% women. Bringing with her 13 years of experience in experimental marketing, event production and creative strategy, Malhotra previously created experiences for brands including Coca Cola, Converse, HBO, Wired magazine and LEGO.
LEGO’s simple, colour-driven aesthetics are reflected in some of Color Factory’s experiences, one might argue. Whilst the colour palette may be broader, its photogenic exhibits share a certain something with the Museum of Ice Cream. And though Color Factory’s offering is somewhat more serene, its collaborative effort with local artists is reminiscent of Meow Wolf’s approach to content curation.
In addition, Color Factory works closely with artists and makers to develop the merchandise on sale at each location.
Relax, we have our own cameras!
Malhotra describes Color Factory’s exhibits as, “Immersive, multi-sensory things that evoke joy and nostalgia. Because of that, everything is inherently shareable.”
Yet, she insists, “We never really consider the social media response when creating our experiences. We encourage people to put their phones down and focus on human connection. To connect with people in real life, to be in the moment; that’s something I think everyone is trying to be better at.”
For the record, Color Factory does not ban phones. Guests can take as many photos as they like. However, with photo booths spread throughout the space, they might not need to take any at all.
“We try to anticipate the moments that people will want to take their phones out and put a really high-end SLR camera there so they are leaning on that versus taking their phones out. Because once they cross that line, it just kinda changes the experience.”
Sharing intimate moments at Color Factory
There is another bonus provided by the photo booths, says Malhotra. “As a mother of two, I am always left out of photos because I am the one taking the photo. Something we hear a lot from guests is, ‘This is one of the best family photos we had all year; this is going to be our holiday photo’.”
Typically guests visit for one to one-and-a-half hours. A popular destination for date nights, Color Factory creates some intimate moments between visitors.
“One of my favourite guest anecdotes,” says Malhotra, “is from a mother who came in with her eight-year-old son. She was sat in one of our experiences called Complementary Compliments. You put on headphones and are asked questions about the person in front of you. You are staring at them for three minutes. In the end, she was in tears. ‘Are you OK?’ we asked. She said she was more than OK; this was the first time she’d really looked at her son this way and seen how beautiful and innocent he was.
“That’s a great example of what we are trying to do at Color Factory; connect people with the people they love.”
Light up dance floors, rainbow-coloured ice cream and funky stairwells
Located in the SoHo neighbourhood of Manhattan, Color Factory’s New York location opened in 2018 with 16 installations spread over a single 20,000 sq ft space. Highlights included an ombré floating balloon room, a light-up dance floor and a bar stocked with rainbow-coloured mochi ice cream. The current crop of artists can be seen below.
“There are mainstays that we won’t change, but I would say we change at least two to three exhibits every year,” says Malhotra. “In New York, we have a confetti room based on the seasons, so you experience that seasonality you see when you are in Central Park.”
Refreshing the exhibits, of course, encourages repeat visitation. This is something which was important in New York City as tourist numbers took time to recover during the pandemic.
“Location is important to us,” says Malhotra. “We want to be somewhere easily accessible. “We love to paint the facades if we can. But each city is different. Houston is two storeys. So we designed the stairwell and made it an experience in and of itself.”
All about the in-person experience
When it opened in November 2019, Color Factory’s Houston outlet invited visitors to the Upper Kirby neighbourhood of the city to experience 14 rooms of eye candy. New experiences have been added since. Highlighted below are the featured artists at the time of writing.
Houston experienced the shortest closure during the pandemic, shutting for around two months in 2020, versus three to four in New York.
Surprisingly, there was no attempt to replicate the Color Factory experience online for fans stuck at home during coronavirus shutdowns.
“We thought about it,” says Malhotra. “But we are all about that in-person experience; a disconnect from technology. So we put all of our focus into reopening and making the experience safe for our guests and employees. In 2020, people were a lot more on edge than they are now.”
Although Color Factory does not release attendance figures for any of its outlets, it says it is on track to welcome more guests in 2022 than ever before. The venues are expecting a sold-out summer.
Color Factory goes big in Chicago
Tickets will be on sale soon for the latest Color Factory, in Chicago. Set to open in June, it is located within Catalog, a dining, retail and immersive entertainment destination at the base of the city’s Willis Tower (formerly the Sears Tower). At over 25,000 sq ft, it will be the biggest Color Factory to date. There will be fewer individual installations – 12 in total – than in New York or Houston, however, each room will be larger.
Among other installations, guests will be able to encounter a site-specific iteration of Edra Soto’s GRAFT series. This features photos from Akilah Townsend. Other featured artists with local ties will be Adrian Kay Wong and Emile Baltz.
The latter’s contribution will be what Malhotra describes as, “A really cool flavorama. It’s all about how your sense of sight and colour can influence your sense of smell.”
From Camille Walala, who is working with Color Factory for the first time, will come a Chicago architecture inspired maze. “Her patterns, her use of colour on a large scale is what drew us towards her,” says Malhotra.
The other featured artists will be Liz West, Anne Patterson, Christine Wong Yap, Harvey & John, Michele Bernhardt, and Tomislav Topic (Quintessence).
“We are fortunate that in Chicago there are multiple scenic shops that have been really great partners to work with,” says Malhotra.
Ravenswood and Bridgewater Studio are two such local vendors. Other fabricators key to the Color Factory story so far include Scenic Solutions of Utah, ABUNCH from Upstate New York, plus multiple New York City scenic shops.
Taking the brand global
Whilst all attention right now is on Chicago, Malhotra confirms Color Factory has international ambitions.
“That is always a goal of ours. We are constantly looking at new cities. But we want to make sure that we perfect what we are doing before we move on to the next one.”
She lets slip that, “London is definitely on our list.”
Malhotra was reticent to recreate the Color Factory experience online during the shutdown. However, she does not rule out taking the brand into the metaverse if it increases its global reach in the years to come.
“If somebody who lives in, say, India has no way of getting to a Color Factory but would like to experience it [online] then, sure, why not?”
