Increasingly, athletes at all levels are choosing running caps and beanie hats to contribute to their sporting success. The old adage that a vast amount of body heat is lost through the head has been proven to be a myth, but even so, good hats really make a difference to sporting safety and performance, and they are very fashionable: Cheryl Cole wore one when she landed in the UK this week and Gryffindor beanie hats are one of the top selling Halloween costumes in the UK this year.

If you want to find a good way to publicise a business, event or person, then quality caps or hats are ideal. Sportspeople know that headgear protects them from the sun, conserve warmth in colder times and may even add a reflective safety element at night through high visibility fabrics or flashings.

When choosing the hat or cap to feature your design remember that knit hats have a more porous quality giving better wicking and breathability while woven hats are less breathable and have less wicking but offer better sun protection. Anglers and sailors like a brim to help avoid low winter sun, while runners like hats that they can crumple up and carry in the hand if they get too hot. Winter athletes need close-fitting hats that don’t fall off when they perform stunts or move at hight speeds – take advice from your clothing provider to ensure your hat will do what you want it to.

Ensure your logo or wording has high contrast to the material of the hat. Athletes move fast so observers need to be able to spot the promotional message easily. If you can run the image or wording right round the hat or on both front and back, you get double the chance of it appearing in photographs of sporting events, which means twice the opportunity to promote yourself.

The New Zealand Rugby Union is fearful of a boycott of the 2015 World Cup, and it’s partly down to branded clothing.

The International Rugby Board (IRB) has controls over the way national sponsors can be included in international tournaments which means that national teams lose money – according to New Zealand, $13 million in a world cup year. How so?

Rugby and football are very different: at a FIFA World Cup the teams are allowed to continue to promote their individual sponsors by having them appear on clothing worn at the team hotels and at press conferences up to two days before every match. But the IRB imposes a complete ban all sponsors (except their own) at the Rugby World Cup. This means that photo opportunities, interviews and other publicity activities that usually allow a team to parade in branded clothing before a big match are denied to the rugby teams.

And in South Africa the team jerseys being sold to the Springboks fans have caused ructions. One MP has said that he will boycott the national shirts, because they were made in China instead of South Africa – and that this denied the country’s struggling clothing industry a chance to benefit from the Springbok phenomenon.

The South African Rugby Union has been lambasted by the national Trade Union Congress for ignoring national job-creation policy, causing a national and international flurry.

Neither national team has achieved the kind of publicity it hoped with its branded clothing initiatives, and while neither of them are likely to be thrilled by the way their promotional clothing initiatives have worked out, neither issue is likely to cause a long term problem for the national team.  The unanticipated outcomes might have been avoided by operating a better sourcing policy, having regard for fair trade and organic products in relation to national pride, and understanding and considering the constraints of sponsorship agreements in advance of investing in them.

According to The Telegraph, Britain’s kids may be exposed to a clever advertising campaign in which 15 ‘super active’ kids under 13 are being paid to wear clothing bearing the Weetabix logo. The idea is that these ‘busy’ and highly social young people will inspire other children to demand Weetabix as their breakfast cereal after seeing the casual clothing emblazoned with the Weetabix picture. In other words, the children are to be mobile advertisements for the value of the brand in creating healthy, happy, active lifestyles.

On a similar basis, Angus Council in Scotland had such a great response to hosting the Ricoh Women’s British Open that they are wooing it for a return visit. More than 40,000 visitors travelled to Carnoustie for the event, at which golfer Catriona Matthew was sponsored to wear specially branded clothing in a drive to boost tourism throughout the area. Matthew has a natural link to the area and embodies the attributes that the local council wants to promote: natural, healthy, local and outdoorsy.

If such approaches work for Weetabix and Angus Council, perhaps they can work for your business? Sponsoring a local volleyball team, providing high visibility clothing for a group of vulnerable young people working on a collective allotment or supporting a group of BMXers with personalised hoodies and knee pads are all ways of boosting your business profile by identifying it with values that matter to your brand.

The British Retail Consortium has revealed that ‘household budgets are under pressure’ – which won’t come as any surprise to anybody trying to sell something to an individual, or business. Apparently, disposable incomes have dropped more than at any time in the previous 34 years.

On the retail side, food inflation is up, but 39% of current grocery spending is going on promoted goods – showing the value of promotional activity in both retail and non-retail markets. Also in retail, clothes and shoes are cheaper than a year ago.

For the savvy business promoter, this is a great time to invest in cost-effective promotional clothing, especially if they want to generate the kind of buzz that earns them enough market share to thrive where others are only managing to survive. On the high streets of the UK, summer promotions have begun earlier and 70% of shops had promotional displays in their windows during the survey, compared with 60% in 2010.

One of the biggest areas of growth in promotional clothing is baby and children’s wear, as businesses recognise the value of the ‘potty pound’ and the way that fashion conscious parents are brand dressing children younger and younger. The arrival of Harper Seven Beckham and the anticipation of a baby boom as soon as the Duke and Duchess of Beckham announce that they are starting a family are contributing to this drive towards promotional clothing for the very small and T-shirts are one of the easiest ways to get a brand, band, book or company on the very small chests of the very small consumers in society. Choosing a child-friendly colour and a bold logo or image to accompany promotional details is a great way to use pester power to get your garment worn by the smart toddler or pre-teen.

One of the key features of Wimbledon is clothing: Venus Williams and her EleVen clothing line steal the headlines every year, although Nadal’s $525,000 watch has been getting a lot of attention. Venus has used her clothing line to promote ‘brand Venus’ but it also intimidates opponents who know that whatever they wear, Venus will upstage them both at the net and in the fashion pages.

The clothing worn by the staff at Wimbledon is always carefully designed to promote the image of Wimbledon as the home of tennis too.

It may surprise you to discover that the official outfitter for Wimbledon is Ralph Lauren, who has updated the uniform of the ball boys and girls this year. The classic look is a navy polo-shirt with the Wimbledon logo on the right sleeve, and either shorts for the boys or tennis skirts for the girls. This year there are two stripes in Wimbledon colours (green and purple) printed across the shirt and a white embroidered 125 on the collar in honour of this year’s anniversary.

Everyone said that England’s bid for the World Cup was perfect, but did we bother to make a world record breaking T-shirt? No! Qatar did and it might go someway to explaining why they are hosting the World Cup in 2022.

To support their World Cup bid, they dediced to break the world record for the largest T-shirt. The previous record stood at 2,782 square meters or the same area as 10 tennis courts and is big enough for some 16,692 people to stand upon.

The T-shirt, made by Qatar Petroleum Company (Qapco), has absolutely smashed the record and measures over 72.2m long and 48.7m wide, weighs 6 tonnes and covers 3,516.25 square meters. The T-shirt was made from cotton and was produced in China before being transported to Doha and its location at Aspire Zone. I think it’s so big, you could probably fit most of the people from Qatar in it!

It is that time of the year again when golf gets exciting, or at the very least, as exciting as golf can get. Yes, the Ryder Cup is back and has taken Wales by storm. For those of you who have not had the pleasure of seeing the Ryder Cup a brief explanation may be in order. The Ryder Cup brings together the best plays from Europe and the United States to compete for golfing bragging rights. However golf is not the only thing that these two might teams have to compete over. With journalists writing about player’s crazy trousers and appalling jumpers, fashion has become a hot topic in golf and remains so in the Ryder Cup.

It seems that although both teams have tried to impress with personalised clothes, team USA are going to be this years fashion failures. Even as they got off the plane, journalist pens were already slating the US teams choice of flairs and smoking jackets. 

They looked like granddads in Boxy jackets, Travolta trousers!

Aside from their failed attempt at a 70′s flashback, team USA’s playing wear has already been criticised as well. After being subjected to wet welsh weather, team USA had an embarrassing moment where they had to buy new rain suits from the merchandise tent during the delay. This was due to the fact that the ones they brought with them didn’t keep them dry. Oh dear!

So what do you think of the teams efforts to impress with their clothes? Who deserves the title of Ryder Cup’s best dressed?

Rainbow coloured flags? A massive parade? More Lady Gaga tunes than you could shake a stick at?! Yes that’s right, this bank holiday weekend saw Manchester Pride descend on the city centre. The annual event aims to promote gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender rights and equality. While I happened to be wondering around the city centre and enjoying the parade, I was reminded by an order that we had here at clothes2order.com that I thought might be of interest to you all. The order came from the London Frontrunners.

The Frontrunners is a running club for gay men, lesbians and gay friendly people who love running. For the seventh year in a row they were organising ‘Pride Run 2010′ down in London. The aim of the run is to bring straight and gay/lesbian people together through sport as well as to raise money for various charities. Having just started with 200 runners taking part, the event now boasts over 1000 competitors with more than £23,000 having being raised for charity to date.

The Frontrunners were looking for their design to be printed on T-shirts, so after a Google search they found clothes2order. Impressed by the price and variety of products they placed an order and got a product that they were happy with. A big congratulations to all that took part in the event, especially to the London Frontrunner who managed the 10km course in 35 minutes 51 seconds (far too quick for my liking!).

Thank you to Martin for answering all my questions, we hope to hear from you and the London Frontrunners again soon!

The most recent example of ambush marketing was insanely successful in getting attention, although the cost may turn out to be too high.

Three dozen pretty women wearing bright orange mini-dresses stole the show during the World Cup. Every camera, including the TV ones, was focused on them, right up until the moment that they were kicked out of the stadium. They’d been hired by a brewery (Bavaria) to promote the company during the football match. Now two of the women and the brewery are facing charges “organising unlawful commercial activities”. And it wasn’t just the pretty women, Robbie Earle was in the stadium as an ambassador for England’s 2018 World Cup bid but he was dropped as a TV commentator and ambassador because the orange lovelies got into the match using tickets he was given for distribution to his family and friends.

Why all the fuss? Because Budweiser paid millions to have exclusive beer representation during the competition.

Sponsorship is big business and ambush marketing tries to achieve the same level of coverage for almost no expenditure. The little orange dresses had only a tiny brand marker, but every Dutch person had already seen the exact same dress being worn by the wife of Rafeal van der Vaart – one of Holland’s best players.

And it’s a dirty business – Linford Christie once wore contact lenses with a cut-out of a puma on them to a press conference, because his status as an Olympian forbade him promoting his sportswear sponsor at Olympic events. And Michael Jordan actually covered up his Reeboks vest when Nike sponsored not the US basketball team, but just the team’s news conferences!

So if you can get away with using some kind of promotional clothing to launch an ambush marketing caper around a sporting event, you might decide it’s worth a try, but don’t mix it with the Olympics! The Olympic committee are notorious for aggressively defending their logo and even words associated with the Olympics, and fines for breaking their rules are substantial – up to £20,000 for each offence.

Sports broadcasters often say that a player has been ‘capped’ for England (or any other country) a certain number of times, but most of us don’t even know what it means and why it’s said.

Back in history, uniforms for sporting events were reserved for select activities such as polo or cricket (or hunting, when that was allowed) because being able to invest in a distinctive uniform was evidence that you were a gentleman and therefore fit to take part. Popular sports such as football were played by working men who had no money for kit and so they would take to the field in any old clothes, but they would wear a cap if they were playing for one team, and be bare-headed if playing for the other. In 1872, a national football match between England and Scotland shows the Scots wearing something like a balaclava while the English wore a range of caps, mostly those that had been summer uniform at the players’ public schools! So ‘being capped’ was being chosen for a team and the term has come to denote a national honour.

Caps are an incredibly popular promotional item because they protect from both sun and rain and are natural advertising objects – if you overprint or embroider a cap, the legend it bears can be seen by everybody who encounters the individual wearing it. Even if he or she turns it round, like a skateboarder, the image is clearly visible to everybody behind him or her! This means that if you have a publicity campaign, a product that you want to promote or a new service to tell the world about, investing in promotional caps can bring you a fantastic return over a long time frame.