Colour Fresh – Talking to Jennifer Thompson about the COLOURizd x Polygiene Collaboration

As the first stage of that collaboration comes to a close, we sat down with Jennifer Thompson, COLOURizd CEO and co-founder, to discuss what the collaboration has achieved, why the results are so exciting, and what the future holds.

Hi, Jennifer. Can you tell us a little about yourself?

I’m Jennifer Thompson, CEO and co-founder of COLOURizd. I’ve spent more than 35 years in textiles, and I started where it all happens, as an intern in a mill. From there, I worked for a variety of textile technology companies that took me inside nearly every major mill in the US. I went on to run my own textile design firm, consulting directly with mills, and then became Director of Textile Design at Target, leading design and product development at retail scale.

Along the way, I also ran an executive coaching company called Deviant Thinking. The name says a lot about how I work. I’m wary of any process that exists mainly because it’s always been done that way, and dyeing is a perfect example. We’ve coloured yarn by soaking it in heated water for thousands of years, and then treated the wastewater as the cost of doing business. COLOURizd starts with a different question – what if you didn’t need the bath at all?

At COLOURizd, I lead the commercial side – business development, partnerships and investor relations. My job is to get mills, brands and capital partners to take that question seriously.

How would you describe what COLOURizd does?

COLOURizd is a technology company run by founders with decades of direct experience working on the mill floor. We supply our QuantumCOLOUR™ colouration technology to mills, enabling them to colour yarn at scale without baths, reactive chemistry, or wastewater discharge. 

What makes COLOURizd unique is the way we approach the problem of chemical application from a mechanical perspective. Conventional dyeing means immersion. Think big vats and large volumes of water. Any chemistry that doesn’t bind to the fibre gets washed down the drain as effluent. 

We come at this problem from a completely different angle. QuantumCOLOUR™ applies chemistry, typically pigment and binder, directly to the yarn. There’s no vat and almost no water. Because it’s a direct, mechanical application rather than an immersion process, nothing is washed away, so there’s no wastewater to discharge. 

What does this mean in terms of efficiency savings?

The QuantumCOLOUR™ process uses about one litre of water per kilogram of yarn, compared with 50 to 110 litres for conventional yarn dyeing. That’s a reduction of roughly 98%, with zero wastewater discharge. And because there’s no dye bath to heat, energy demand falls too. The result is up to 73% lower CO₂ emissions, independently verified under ISO 14067:2018.

QuantumCOLOUR™ doesn’t refine the dyeing process. It changes how colour gets onto yarn.

What are the main pain points COLOURizd solves for its customers?

Water and wastewater. Dyeing is one of the most resource-intensive steps in textile manufacturing, and the water going in is only half the problem. Everything that comes out of a conventional dye bath has to be dealt with. That includes unfixed dye, salts, auxiliary chemicals, and heat. Treating that effluent is expensive. Discharge limits keep tightening, and in some regions a mill’s effluent capacity decides whether it can grow at all.

QuantumCOLOUR™ produces zero wastewater discharge. The small amount of water we use stays with the yarn and evaporates during drying, so there’s nothing to treat and nothing to discharge. Independent assessments have confirmed it.

So the headline is water. But what mills are really buying is less exposure. Less exposure to water scarcity, wastewater regulation, and energy prices they can’t control.

Can you explain what the Polygiene x COLOURizd project involves?

QuantumCOLOUR™ colours yarn without a water bath, and we wanted to see whether it could apply antimicrobial odor control at the same time. Antimicrobial treatments are traditionally applied as a separate finish at the fabric stage, which adds another process step with its own energy cost. So we tested whether QuantumCOLOUR™ could apply Polygiene’s chemistry at the yarn stage, in the same pass as the colour.

And what were the results?

The trial was incredibly successful. We applied colour and antimicrobial chemistry simultaneously, in a single process step, with excellent wash fastness. For both Polygiene and us, this is really exciting, as it addresses a known limitation of antimicrobial finishes. 

While antibacterial treatments applied to the fabric surface via immersion can last a long time and provide ongoing protection, they will eventually diminish with washing. 

QuantumCOLOUR™ delivers Polygiene’s antibacterial treatment into the yarn structure itself, enhancing its durability and improving its wash resistance.

Beyond this, the collaboration reinforced that this is the kind of partnership model I want to see more of – two companies addressing a real limitation and innovating, rather than simply repackaging an existing technology.

What’s next for the project?

Demonstrating enhanced wash fastness validates the core thesis behind our collaboration. But there are a few places we could take this next. We’re really interested in exploring whether colour fade could serve as a practical wear indicator for antimicrobial performance. At the same time, the project’s success raises the question: if yarn-stage application works for one antimicrobial chemistry, why not other Polygiene formulations, other fibers, and other functional finishes beyond antimicrobial treatment?

Thanks for your time, Jennifer! We look forward to sharing more about the Polygiene x COLOURizd collaboration over the coming months, and we are incredibly excited to be working with a company whose values so clearly align with the Polygiene ethos.