The Brand
Gabi and Tonya started Gato with a simple idea that was surprisingly hard to get right: make chocolate-covered dates and nut butter treats that taste great and feel instantly recognizable as a brand.
As Gato grew into more retail channels, the packaging grew with it. Stand-up pouches, folding cartons, and an expanding lineup of SKUs all had to carry the same signature pink.
The Challenge
Keeping one brand color consistent across flexible film and paperboard is one of the harder problems in packaging.
The two materials respond to ink differently. Film requires precise control of the white underlayer to achieve the right opacity and color, while paperboard absorbs ink into its fibers and can shift the final color.
Gato was already seeing that problem in production. With pouches and cartons coming from different suppliers, the same signature pink could look noticeably different when the two packages sat next to each other.
For Gabi and Tonya, the issue went beyond color. Every additional packaging format also meant another supplier, another production process, and more details to personally manage.
The Process
We calibrated both materials in parallel rather than treating each package as a separate project.
Under standardized press lighting, we adjusted ink density, white base application, and surface finishes across both substrates until the pouch and carton matched the same Gato brand baseline.
The result was a color match across both flexible pouches and paperboard cartons.
At the same time, we consolidated the two packaging formats into one workflow, giving Gato a single point of contact for both pouches and cartons instead of separate vendor relationships.The Result
The Result
Gato reduced its packaging management overhead by 50%.
The brand can now launch new SKUs across multiple packaging formats without Gabi and Tonya having to coordinate separate suppliers or repeatedly chase color corrections between materials.
And most importantly, the pink now stays consistent from pouch to carton.
For Gabi and Tonya, that means less time managing packaging and more time building Gato.
That is also what we want Dylign to do for growing brands: take packaging off the founder's plate, so founders can spend more of their time on the product, the customer, and the business they actually set out to build.
“Dylign kept our pink consistent across every format.”
