If you’re buying workplace uniforms it can be tough to decide what’s best for your team. There’s a wide range of variables: price, colour, cut, design, printing, embroidery … the permutations seem almost endless. Here are a few tips to simplify the decision-making process:

• Price is vital, but remember that initial price may not be the whole story. Thin, cheap clothing may not launder well, or may fade or warp, giving a poor impression of your business and maybe causing your staff to feel demoralised. You may also end up replacing cheap uniforms quicker. Google your shortlisted brands and see what reviewers have to say about durability.

• Colour matters, and it’s best to pick something that resembles your business logo, often called your ‘livery’ in the trade. A complementary colour can harmonise with that livery, while a contrasting colour adds life to the item. Designers and garment printers have vast experience in what colours work well, so call on their expertise to help you get something that will look good and be easy to see. Take their advice on whether to go for embroidery or printing too, as they will have knowledge of clothing use in similar industries to yours.

• Allow for weather variations, and remember that an air conditioned office may be colder than a heated driver’s cab, so your view of what your employees need may be inaccurate. Give them the opportunity to layer clothing: a vest under a shirt or a polo-shirt that can be worn with a jacket or fleece, a cap or a knit hat.

When ordering clothing for companies, schools or teams, it’s important to get the beset value for money possible. Here are four tips to help get the most from your budget:

1. Keep a record of previous purchases. Don’t forget to include the date of ordering, sizes and a copy of any artwork you supply to the manufacturer or printer. This helps when placing a new order, as you may find you need to adjust the amount of clothing you order in each size, or the time of year at which you order, to get the best discount. Schools may find that they need more clothes in the larger child sizes than they had appreciated, as children get taller every year, and that they are not using all the smaller sizes, so money is being wasted on unworn polo-shirts or shorts.

2. Record turnover and causes for it. It can be difficult to keep track of uniform disbursement, but where possible, you can try to establish why uniform clothing needs to be replaced or upgraded. Planning ahead can also save you money: ordering summer clothing in good time for the warm weather can mean you benefit from a slower free delivery, rather than having to pay a premium delivery rate for a rush order.

3. Ask about discounts. Sometimes you can get a better discount by purchasing more, or changing your delivery options – if you’ve kept a good record of your past purchasing, you can probably work out ways to make savings on bulk purchases and still make good use of everything you buy.

4. Ask about extras. Many suppliers can offer a range of accessories and supplementary options that support uniform clothing, such as high-visibility detailing on winter clothing, logos on summer caps that protect the wearers from sunburn, or even value-added extras such as printed bags in which to transport the new clothing being supplied

There are three key concerns when selecting promotional clothing

• Budget
• Appearance
• Performance

Budget is simple and is usually the tightest and most evident constraint on promotional clothing. There will usually be a limit on what can be spent, and within that limit the clothing has to be effective and attractive.

Appearance can be shaped by material – cheap T-shirts do not last long, but if you are promoting a short-term event such as a weekend sale or a festival, they may be all that is required. More substantial materials will give a longer life to the garment and a more solid appearance to the clothing which reflects on the brand the promotional clothing supports. Bear in mind the climate and population in your chosen area: if there are many older residents, you are more likely to succeed with polo-shirts than T-shirts, but if there’s a large student population, jogging pants and T-shirts will be much more popular than classic clothing items.

Performance is part of the process of applying promotional clothing to the world. If you choose embroidered baseball caps, they will get much more wear in summer than winter, while knit hats will be more popular in winter than summer. Barbecue aprons are summer clothing but gloves and scarves perform best for their brand in winter. Making a wise selection gets your message out their for the maximum period of time, but other businesses will know this too, so don’t disregard the competition when planning your promotional clothing: your garments have to be attractive to get worn as well as season-appropriate.

A nuts and bolts article by Forbes shows how clothing brand Mishka has linked its garments to music to create a compelling blend for consumers, but what can non-clothing brands do to distinguish themselves from the competition?

Mishka has developed a relationship with hip-hop groups that has fed a loyalty factor into its garment sales. When groups like BBU are endorsed by DJs like Diplo, the spin-off for the clothing company that supports the group is a group of fans that wear Mishka clothing to show their fandom for Diplo, or BBU or several other bands.

The average business may not feel equipped or even keen, to get into the world of music promotion, but every founder has some kind of outside interest. For Mishka’s Mikhail Bortnik it was skate graphics and band T-shirts. For a car dealership owner it may be classic cars, the proprietor of a white goods store may love bowling, or the wife of the founder of a software company may be committed to growing vegetables. Whatever the passion, there are ways to promote relationships in the community through clothing, sponsorship and genuine grass roots enthusiasm.

Mishka was one of the first clothing retailers to have a blog ‘The Bloglin’ which launched in 2007 and became a check in point for fashion fans and music fans alike.

Bowling tournament schedules can be posted online with reviews of previous games, tips and hints about what to grow now and what to cook with what’s seasonally available can be treated similarly. Recipe lists given away with white goods – bowling bags or vegetable bags or baseball caps printed with the company logo for anybody doing anything outdoors, sponsored bowls or weed clearances for a local charity … the ideas are limited only by the ingenuity of those involved, and it’s much easier to promote a good cause than a company, any day. Getting staff involved is just as easy. You can set up a bowling team or a workplace vegetable bed, offer a prize for the best score or the biggest potato, and then put out regular press releases about the company’s charitable activities, supported by photos of the team wearing branded clothing.

According to a recent report from Sheffield Hallam University, the two sectors that will benefit most from the London Olympics are gambling and sports clothing. The research suggests that the UK sporting economy will expand and the clothing industry in particular is likely to grow by 15% in the next three years, while the gambling industry is predicted to grow by around 6% over the same period.

The long term trend of the British sporting industry to take a larger share of national economic activity is likely to accelerate as a result of the Olympics, and will spike in specific areas if British athletes win gold medals during the games: already Mo Farah’s impact on distance running has been seen not just in medal tallies and young people entering the sport but in an increase in sales of United Jack running vests and his trademark white-rimmed running glasses. As sports stars like Freddie Flintoff and Jonny Wilkinson develop their own sporting clothing brands, this trend will become a large part of both the economy and the fashion consciousness of the nation.

One of the greatest growth areas of sports clothing is branded winter wear, especially clothing that has UV protection against winter sun. Snow reflects around 80% of UV radiation, which is much higher than the 10% reflected by water, but most people forget to wear sunscreen in winter who would always put on suncream when they wore shorts and a T-shirt on the beach.

Men are much more likely to develop melanoma (a sun related skin cancer) than women because they wear less sunscreening products and tend to exercise outdoors more, giving them a greater risk of exposure to high UV levels on a regular basis, especially if they play team sports such as rugby or football where hats and sunglasses are not generally worn.

The excellent and exhaustive blog, Clothes on Film has taken its annual trip through just about every film that came out this year (and some that we’d never heard of but apparently premiered anyway) to look at what clothing tells us about character. It’s fascinating.

Helena Bonham Carter and Colin Firth both played with reality – Helena by sticking to it and wearing genuine vintage fur, while Colin insisted on not wearing a suit jacket underneath his overcoat because it made him too bulky to be a realistic King George VI. Russell Brand played Arthur Bach in suits tailored by Martin Greenfield in New York to included a wide range of fabrics and to look like Savile Row tailoring while meeting the demands of an active character on a film
set.

Several films this year also focus on masculinity, using the most traditional symbol, the plain white T-shirt as worn by Elvis Presley and James Dean and seen in Drive worn by Ryan Gosling and even by Captain America! So plain white T-shirts for men add to their sense of masculinity, but make women feel vulnerable because of the risk of underwear showing through. Putting male staff in white and women in grey, blue or black T-shirts can create an impression of gender balance.

On TV, Boardwalk Empire also used Martin Greenfield to dress its characters in 1920s style and this focus has been particularly important in giving the impression of authority, power and prestige – according to the designers, this has involved using ‘hard’ dressing such as starch, brilliant whites and matte neutrals like beige and hats. Baseball style or soft caps were saved for lower ranking characters while harder headwear like fedoras or boaters were worn by bosses. Hats functioned to reveal who had power. That’s something that businesses tend to forget – if you put somebody in a
baseball cap, they have no authority – so let senior staff go bare-headed or give them a hat with a harder profile that denotes power.

There’s a lot to learn from film … and smart companies will use a designer who has a finger on the pulse to ensure that staff uniforms convey some of these subtle messages that help boost business success and productivity.

With the bad news about retail sales over the past month, it may be time for many small businesses to design a strategy that uses promotional clothing to increase awareness and boost sales.

One of the easiest ways to win a good share of the Christmas spend is to offer something for nothing. Station a couple of temps outside your premises, giving passers-by a voucher for a free mince pie or glass of mulled apple juice. Set up the hospitality station in the heart of the shop or business, so that people have to walk right in to get their freebie and ensure you have good footfall with a couple more staff members giving away the food or drink and more guiding people back on a circular route through the space so that there isn’t a log-jam. Dress the temps and food servers in appropriate hospitality clothing such as branded aprons and caps trimmed with holly or tinsel so that their role is clear.

Alternatively, identify a local good cause and print some promotional T-shirts for your staff, including both your logo and theirs. Tell the press that you’re going to donate a certain percentage of every purchase over £100 to the charity and make sure you have posters and flyers so that customers know their spend is going to help the good cause. Make sure you issue a press release detailing the amount donated and featuring a picture of your staff in their promotional clothing. It gives you three chances at good publicity: through publicity for the event, during the event itself, and as a good news story after the event.

This week has seen the unveiling of the uniforms that will be worn by the support staff and volunteers for the London Olympics. Around 70,000 volunteers and 6,000 paid employees will wear the branded clothing which has been designed to be a clear presence for the millions of tourists who will travel to the games.

The clothing has also been designed to balance the practical requirements of uniforms for active people, brand image and promotion of London, of the Olympics and of British heritage. The case study behind the design of the clothing is a useful tool for any company designing work clothing.

The uniform is a functional outfit that divides into two categories:
1.    Games Makers who will be given a jacket, polo shirt, trousers, trainers, socks, cap, and umbrella
2.    Technical Officials receive a jacket, trousers and (for women) a skirt, a shirt, a trilby hat and a tie for men and a scarf for women.
Epaulettes in different colours are used to identify special staff such as white for medical officials, red for team leaders and green for those involved in the anti-doping programme.

This is a good idea for any company that has staff with a range of different roles and functions. Making the various accessories colour-coded helps everybody to know what their job is and what tasks others will be undertaking.

The basic colourway is deep red and purple which picks up on the themes of the regimental uniform of the Grenadier Guards uniform, the original clothing worn by the staff at the 1948 London Olympics, Wimbledon tennis colours and those of the Henley Regatta.

Picking a theme that echoes your company’s heritage is a great way to build brand values – this can be a colour, the cut of the clothing or an emblem that you build into the design to remind people of what underpins your company and why it matter.

There’s a lot of up-to-date detail in the clothing too, drawn from the latest designs in sportswear such as the cut, ergonomic seams and the wicking fabrics.

Using modern detailing such as flat seams, poly-cotton fabrics and work socks that help inhibit foot infections can all keep staff happy and comfortable at work.

For many companies, offering a personalised or branded gift at Christmas has several purposes:

1.    It recognises customer loyalty
2.    It creates brand recognition
3.    It offers a thank you to new customers who may not be fully engaged with the brand yet
4.    It establishes the company offering the gift as being substantial and caring.

These are great marketing opportunities that shouldn’t be neglected even when marketing budgets are tight. In fact, thinking creatively around the idea of a business to customer gift is a great way to establish some brand features that will encourage your customers to think of the company as one that supports them in tough times.

Branded clothing has practical value, unlike the traditional forms of corporate gift such bottles of wine or spirits, boxes of chocolates or the more modern and less personal approach of giving vouchers.

At the top end of the scale, monogrammed shirts, or hoodies for younger individuals offer a superb, highly-personalised approach to gift giving. It’s not a cheap way to recognise the customer’s value but for the truly valued client, it’s a brilliant approach. Think outside the box though, and see if you can select something that the customer will really value: sports clothing with a monogram that a customer can use for their favourite sport is an ideal way to say thank you.

In the middle of the market, T-shirts offer a chance to give a gift that gets worn, and is fully appreciated without breaking the bank. If your customers are young, find a young designer to style your company logo in a completely new way, that reflects current trends but if they’re more traditional, go for a classic and simple statement, maybe the company logo as a sleeve print or small embroidered detail with neat and unobtrusive contact details below it.

For the masses, if you have lots of customers and/or want to buy something that can be used for both Christmas gift and general promotional purposes, think about branded hats or lightweight bags. Don’t fall for too much novelty though: amusing images like Santa riding on your logo etc are only funny for a very short time and then fall out of favour and have no value to the recipient. It’s better to think about longevity and choose a hat or bag that will be used year round. Practicality is the key to a successful gift and you can double the promotional whammy you get from such items by running a competition that offers to reward the person who takes the best picture of their hat/bag in an unusual place or in a location appropriate to your business. Post the photos on facebook and tweet about them in your twitter account to get the maximum cross-platform marketing boost from your promotional clothing spend.

As the American government faces cutbacks, President Obama has told government agencies to reduce spending on ‘extraneous promotional items’ such as mouse pads and coffee mugs. It’s not quite as silly as it sounds: each department is required to demonstrate how it’s going to reduce wasteful spending and/or create more efficient ways of operating.

Commemorative gifts such as backpacks have been ruled out except for where such an item has a clear purpose so that the logo-emblazoned baseball caps and printed T-shirts many American agencies give away to both staff and visitors may now become rare items. However some branded clothing has been given a special status: the printed jackets FBI agents wear on raids will remain because they are classed as ‘essential work-related clothing’.

So how can the average business be sure that it’s not wasting money on inappropriate branded clothing? Customer or staff research in advance of placing an order is key to getting it right. There’s no point designing and printing hundreds of bags for your customers if they actually prefer to carry backpacks. If your staff wear baseball caps and you order beanie hats, you’re likely to find that your investment is wasted.