Just about every business at some time needs to have some small promotional give-aways: those things that are reasonable to buy in bulk, easy to store and transport and can be handed out or posted to people for a variety of reasons from winning a competition, to saying thank you for an order, to recognising that they’ve become a member of a group or club, to joining the company as a member of staff. These items need to have the company or group name and some kind of contact details on them. Simple, right?

Perhaps not. Companies, businesses and organisations need to recognise that any form of marketing has to answer other questions that it raises, such as, ‘how environmental is this company’ or ‘does this club or group demonstrate ethical behaviour’? An example – a children’s drama club shouldn’t be buying the kids T-shirts to wear at rehearsals that may have been created using child labour.

The ‘green revolution’ means that effective marketing also involves ethical and environmental issues – organic clothing and promotional items mean that it’s easy for any organisation to meet this need.

Organic cotton T-shirts, for example, are made from cotton that uses none of the harmful pesticides used in conventional cotton production. This makes the T-shirts eco-friendly and allows the buyer and the wearer both to make a powerful environmental statement because wearing the T-shirt allows them to show that they are limiting their impact on the environment. This kind of behaviour is both good PR and good for the planet. As a result, using organic clothing is superb way to market a brand or gain publicity for a group or team, and organic cotton T-shirts are a simple and cost-effective way to show that your company is on the side of the good guys.

Global market research analyst Mintel recently conducted some research that reveals that sales of organic and ethical clothing more than quadrupled in the period 2004 to 2009, making it a £175 million business by early 2009.

For individuals, and businesses, ethical issues such as fair trade, environmental protection and supply chain problems have become increasingly important and this is one reason that the space for organic and ethical clothing in the market place has grown, but it’s not the only reason.

Another reason is that consumers are watching their pennies and dimes, and it’s natural for them to make careful purchasing choices and they increasingly look for clothing that minimises impact on the environment, and maximises the benefits of trade to those at the bottom of the supply chain.  This means that everybody, from the Mum buying school T-shirts for her school-kids, through to the teen at university who wants a hoodie that says something about him that will impress his peer group, through to the HR Manager who is ordering personalised uniforms for a staff of over a thousand, will focus not just on value for money, but also on value to people and the planet.

Organic and ethical baby clothing has been one of the biggest growth areas of this expanding market, and its not at all surprising, when you think of how concerned new parents are to ensure their baby is as healthy and happy as possible. Conventionally grown cotton uses only 3% of the world’s farmland but soaks up 25% of the world’s pesticides – not something anybody wants to contemplate next to their baby’s delicate skin.

So whether it’s a T-shirt for a newborn, rough and tumble training shirts for the local rugby team, or work-wear for hundreds of staff, it’s likely that organic clothing will be the first choice in the future.

There are many good reasons for choosing the humble T-shirt as your company uniform:

•    Purchase Cost – buying T-shirts is not expensive, compared to the cost of formal clothing like collared shirts, suits and business jackets
•    Maintenance Cost – this is really low: T-shirts can be hand-washed, washed in a machine, tumble-dried, line-dried, all of which means that the poorest part-time student worker or the most affluent Managing Director will pay about the same amount to wash a T-shirt – the student will do it by hand for pennies and the M.D.’s maid or au pair will shove it in his top of the range washing machine, but the cost per clothing item is about the same. Compare this to the cost of washing and ironing formal shirts or the dry-cleaning costs of jackets and business trousers and skirts, and you can see that the people at the bottom of your company will pay disproportionately more for maintaining their company uniform, because you can’t easily dry-clean your formal business wear at home, especially if you don’t have a washing machine
•    Communication – a lot of companies don’t think about this, and they should. If the T-shirt is your company uniform, you can budget for clothing that conveys a company message to both staff and visitors: a strong bright logo builds your brand image and helps people remember your name, and a slogan or business statement allows your staff to buy into the company ethos. You can’t get that on a business shirt
•    Brand support – it’s much easier to create a strong brand and to have promotional activity on posters, and as giveaways like branded bags, keyrings or other tiny items, if your brand has been strongly established through staff clothing
•    Staff turnover – if you have a degree of staff turnover, such as summer staff, it’s both cheaper and easier to outfit them with uniform because T-shirts come in all sizes and shapes and can easily be held in stock or swiftly re-ordered to meet company needs.

So when you’re planning a company uniform, think smart – think T-shirt!

The internet is full of companies that claim they can produce promotional clothing – what should you look for in a top-class supplier?

•    Think about the future … what about deliveries and returns and re-orders, or alterations that you need to make to your order – are you truly confident that your communications with an anonymous website is going to deliver what you need, not just in terms of goods but also in terms of a relationship that gets you the best clothing at the best price? Picking a company with a real geographic location and with people on the end of a telephone with whom you can explore all the options open to you, is the best way to ensure your promotional clothing investment isn’t wasted.

•    You need brands … good clothing is essential if staff and customers are going to wear your promotional gear, and that means reliable and trusted brands that convey a message that supports your own promotional message.  Being able to choose from a wide range of recognised brands means that you get exactly the kind of clothing you want, whether it’s budget, luxury or organic.

•    A picture paints a thousand words … and seeing samples and a strong portfolio from your chosen supplier will really help you understand what they can do and whether they have the expertise and skills to deliver what you want. If all their designs look similar or if their customer base seems limited to one profession, be warned, they may not be the best company to support your promotional activity.
•    Comparisons are NOT odious … a really top-notch promotional clothing supplier will be interested in your plans, whether you’re buying a dozen T-shirts for a one day sale in your shop, or a thousand polo-shirts to outfit waiting staff at hundreds of cafes. They will have ideas to share with you, suggestions on what clothing works best for your circumstances and will be able to point out factors that you may not have considered, like special washing instructions, or that your great idea for an embroidered logo has the same colours as another company’s famous brand image, which could lead to confusion. In other words, they are interested in what they can do for your business, not just what your business can do for them, and that means they will go the extra distance to ensure your promotional clothing does what you want it to.

As harder spending decisions have to be made, and yet customers have to be wooed into placing repeat orders or choosing you for the first time, it’s important to select corporate gifts and give-aways very carefully.

The first thing to be aware of is the nature of your target audience – you want to supply them with something they will not just use, but will actually value – coasters and pens, for example, are next to valueless in promoting customer awareness and brand value – people think of them as cheap disposable items and don’t pay attention to the branding that they contain. More valued gifts are things like quality clothing and bags that last for a long time.

The second consideration is the message you wish to project, and this isn’t just your company name, logo and address!  Is it important that you customers think of you as a solutions provider, a problem solver, a port of call when difficulties arise? Do you want them to think of your speed and efficiency, or your personalised service? Is it more vital that they remember how cost-effective you are, or how by using you they join a select group who call on your services? All these considerations shape the decision you make: memory sticks and erasers are good for ‘mistake correction’ messages, while clothing is valuable when persuading people to think of you as a select, specialist provider. For speed, baseball caps carry a subliminal ‘fast’ message while for classic styling, polo-shirts have a timeless appeal.

It is crucial to select the best quality promotional gifts that your budget covers because it’s a competitive world, and if you and a competitor give a similar ‘gift’ but yours is shoddy – guess who will be remembered as the good supplier and who will be the bad guy? If your promotional T-shirts twist or run in the wash, or your bags fall apart in ten minutes, you might as well not have spent the money, because all you’ve done is given yourself a negative message.

Equally, you need to think about whether your promotional gifts should carry a promotional message – should your T-shirts be organic for example, or should your packaging be recyclable? It can be vital to your reputation to get this part of the gift-giving process right, as many companies have found out to their cost when the bad publicity rolls in.

There had been fears that clothing certified as organic by the Soil Association might be about to lose its organic status. This was because a consultation on organic status suggested that goods that were airfreighted to or from the UK could be deprived of organic labelling.

This led to some minor panics, especially in companies that have invested in organic cotton uniforms and work clothing such as promotional T-shirts, to support their ethical business policies. Suddenly their printed or monogrammed clothing looked like it might become just another set of cotton garments, without the organic status that was all important to them.

However it turns out the fears were unfounded: promotional clothing certified by the Soil Association maintains its organic status even if it is transported by air, clothing or textile companies that are already certified by the Soil Association are judged on different standards to those used to certify the food industry. Therefore, uniforms or promotional clothing that have been certified organic will remain organic even if they are flown around internationally to be worn by staff all over the world.

China’s formerly booming textiles market has suffered a further downturn, especially in the sales of polo and T-shirt blanks where shipments in the 2008 fell 6% in the first eight months of the year. It is estimated that the overall fall will be 10 – 15% over the 12 months of 2008.

At the beginning of 2008, Chinese suppliers sold more blanks to the EU because of concerns about the strength of the dollar but by August, the EU market had been saturated and Chinese factories began to close – a trend that’s expected to continue in 2009. Many Chinese suppliers are currently closing out orders placed in 2008 but they fear they will have no new orders for 2009.

There are several reasons for this – corporate clients, in particular are sourcing workwear that has a clearer chain of accountability and many are preferring to use organic and fair-trade blanks to ensure they aren’t accused of using child labour or environment-harming fabrics to dress their staff.

Another reason is that some large uniform clients have been ‘leaned on’ to be loyal to local or national suppliers – this means that where before they might have taken the cheapest quote, they have now been persuaded by unions, trade bodies or associations such as Chambers of Commerce, to deal with neighbours in ‘virtuous circles’ that aim to keep businesses in a country or region in business through the recession.

Finally, those who do choose to buy uniforms and promotional clothing entirely on price are moving their sourcing to South and Southeast Asian nations which are undercutting their Chinese neighbours.

Many people struggle with some of the more technical jargon that is involved in customisable clothing so here at clothes2order.com we have created an A-Z of terms we think might be useful. If you realise this is a less than comprehensive A-Z don’t blame us – it’s not our fault nothing in the industry begins with a Q!

A – Adobe Illustrator:

Adobe Illustrator is a vectored design program that that allows users to compose and edit images built through geometrical shapes based upon mathematical equations such as points, lines, curves and polygons and save them in one of many formats such as EPS, PDF, WMF, SVG or VML.

B – Blank T-Shirt:

A blank t-shirt is really just a normal plain t-shirt ready and waiting to have something printed on to it. A blank t-shirt can come in any colour or style but must have no pre-existing logos or designs.

C – Cad Cut Printing:

Also referred to as ‘vinyl cut’, cad cutting is a method of printing text or a logo onto t-shirts, polo shirts and even fleeces. The logo or text must first have an outline added (easily managed with a design program such as Adobe Illustrator). The design is then input direct into a digital cutter which electronically cuts the design on to a single colour sheet of flock, foil or vinyl. After weeding the cut panels are taken and are applied to the garment using a commercial heat press and release paper. Cad cut printing is ideal for small quantities as it is relatively cheap to set up and quick to arrive but the appearance is not as popular as screen printed and only single colour prints can be made. For a similar result but with multiple print colours transfer printing is recommended.

D – Direct to Garment Printing (DTG):

DTG printing is a relatively recent development in the world of customised garments. It describes a fully digital printing method that allows you to print literally anything you require directly onto your garments, including full colour photo printing. DTG printing offers far superior quality in comparison to full colour transfer printing and does not require time-consuming weeding. The process works in much the same manner as a modern inkjet printer you might have at home; instead of first printing your photo or design onto transfer paper and then applying it to the garment with a heat press, DTG printing machines print directly onto the garment. This results in a fantastically high quality print and maximum detail, even on complex full colour designs. Until recently, DTG printers could only print effectively onto white garments but due to advances in technology they can now be used on any coloured garment, including very dark colours such as black and navy. DTG offers superb quality at low setup costs and delivery can be made within 24 hours.

E – Embroidered Clothing:

Usually custom embroidery takes the form of a company logo, which must be digitised (where the logo is manually redrawn in a compatible format) before the embroidery machine can get to work. Embroidering a logo provides a long lasting quality image but costs more than printing and it is often difficult to recreate small text legibly.

F – Foil and Flock:

Transfer foil and flock effect vinyl are two materials often used as an alternative to regular vinyl in the heat pressing process. Each provides a different range of texture to vinyl and as such whether one uses flock, foil or vinyl very much depends on the design and final feel one requires.

H – Heat Press:

A heat press is used in applying a pattern to an object. Firstly a design must be printed onto transfer paper, either directly such as in the transfer printing method or via screen printing. Both the printed transfer paper and t-shirt, polo shirt, cap or fleece onto which you want your pattern are then introduced to the heat press, which is used to imprint the design or logo with the application of both heat and pressure through a platen. While heat presses are often used to apply designs to garments, they can also be used on other imprintable products.

I – Imprintable Products:

An imprintable product is one on which a design can be screen printed, transfer printed, DTG printed or cad cut printed. This can take the form of a garment such as a t-shirt, polo shirt, jacket, sweatshirt, cap or another promotional product such as a mug or plate.

L – Light Reactive Chemicals:

A light reactive chemical is one that will disintegrate when exposed to light. When used in the screen printing process it is usually placed in strategic areas of a fine mesh screen consists and then the whole screen is exposed to light, leaving the chemical to break down and wash off, fashioning spaces in the mesh. The chemical can be arranged so that any desired pattern is created.

O – Organic:

Some companies offer the option to purchase organic promotionalwear. This will mean that the t-shirt or polo shirt on which your logo/text is printed will have been confirmed as organic by one of many independent certifiers. The printing/embroidering process will remain the same as with conventional customised garments though.

P – Platen:

A platen (or platten) is a flat solid board, typically made of a metal plate, that is pressed against something to cause an impression in printing.

R – Release Paper:

Release paper is most commonly made out of silicone and serves as a thin, heat resistant paper used between a printed sheet and material in a heat press to prevent the two sticking together.

S – Screen Printing:

Screen printing is the traditional method of transferring colour to a t-shirt or polo shirt by applying colour with ink. In order to screen print an item the design has to be separated into the component colours (nowadays achieved by design programs such as Adobe Illustrator) and then each colour has a separate screen produced using light reactive chemicals. The ink can then be screen printed onto the t-shirts directly or via transfer paper and a heat press. If the direct printing method is used, the t-shirts are placed on a platen and the colours are then applied individually by placing the screen on top of the t-shirt and forcing the printers ink through the relevant screen onto the t-shirt. Screen printing is ideal for large quantities of printed garments but can be expensive for smaller orders requiring more than one colour.

T – Transfer Printing:

This involves taking a high resolution image and printing the image onto commercial quality transfer paper. One can print multi-coloured images in most formats including BMP,TIF, GIF, AI and JPEG. The quality of the image produced is directly related to the quality of the image supplied so it is important to supply a quality image. Once the image is on the transfer paper it is then taken and applied using a commercial heat press and release paper to the item of clothing. Transfer printing is ideal for small quantities as it is relatively cheap to set up and can be dispatched on the same day but the appearance is not as popular as screen printed. For a similar result but with single colours cad cut printing is recommended.

U – Uniform:

Customising clothing can provide the perfect uniform, one stylish enough for the employees to wear yet professional enough for a demanding boss.

V – Vinyl:

Vinyl is not just an outdated method for listening to The Beatles! Vinyl film is a sheet of vinyl that can come in many colours and may be cut to any shape or size, such as a name, logo, number or some simple text. Once this is done the vinyl can be simply and easily imprinted onto a garment with a heat press and release paper. You might even recognise a heat transfer using vinyl if you look carefully at the number printed on the back of your replica football kit.

W – Weeding:

This is the term for when the leftover uncut areas from a digital cutting of printed vinyl, flock or foil sheet are removed by hand.

X, Y, Z – Examine Your Zones:

Both printing and embroidering are available in many areas, or ’zones’, of a t-shirt or polo shirt. Before deciding on what logo or text you require it is a good idea to think about where on the garment you would like it to appear. For instance, the most popular choice for a company logo is above the left breast, but the zones on either sleeve make a great place to include a sponsors name for an event.

For more information and for help on t-shirt printing visit the excellent T-Shirt Forum.

Think something is missing from this A-Z? We’d love to hear your comments and suggestions.

A survey, carried out by Populus, reveals that while the overall rating of every other high street clothing retailer has either gone up or remained steady over the past year, Primark’s has fallen. The findings follow a recent Panorama investigation, revealing that some Primark suppliers in India were contracting out embroidery to firms that used child labour. And a survey by Drapers, the fashion industry magazine, shows that – as a result of the controversy – 44% of Primark shoppers say they would switch to another retailer.

The Populus survey also showed that nearly half of the consumers who expressed concern said that that their biggest worry when judging a clothing retailer is its treatment of workers in developing countries. Quality beat price as the most important factor when it comes to deciding where to buy an item of clothing for most consumers, reflecting a prevailing feeling that consumers are seeking value in terms of quality now that we’ve entered the credit crunch, rather than merely paying the cheapest price.

Such concerns are addressed by The Organic Exchange and Dutch-based fashion transparency label MADE-BY who have created an event focusing on sustainable fashion in Europe. It will be held at The National Library in Copenhagen, Denmark on 2^nd and 3^rd December. The theme of the event will be how retailers can respond to changes in consumer opinion and the shifting economic situation. There will also be talks on eco-friendly fabrics, consumer communication and marketing and textile labelling and certification.

And there’s a supply line response to this issue too. Intertek has launched a new system for measuring the environmental and socially responsible performance of textile mills. The new Mill Qualification Program (MQP) picks up on the challenges faced by retailers and brands to assist suppliers achieving their social, environmental and quality expectations. MQP quality evaluations cover the stages of textile production: fibre production, fibre processing and spinning, yarn preparation, fabric production, bleaching, dyeing, printing and finishing.