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!

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With the economy how it is, there is no shame in not having a job at the moment. Most  seem to be ‘career planning’, ‘weighing up their options’ or at the very least a ‘freelance facebooker’ (aren‘t we all?!). If only we could we could all invent dream jobs for ourselves!

Enter Jason Sadler or as Fox Business dubbed him ‘Entrepreneur of the Century’. With his salary in excess of $80,000 a year and a job description of ‘wear some printed t-shirts’, I feel that title might just be justified.

‘How the heck does he do it?!’

To put it simply, Jason Sadler’s body is for sale.…well, his torso at least. By putting his chest on sale to any business, charity or freelance facebooker that wants it, he offers to become their living and breathing billboard for one day of the year.

Jason Sadler has managed to create a cost effective marketing strategy which firms are willing to take a risk on. By wearing a promo t-shirt all day and writing about it to his facebook friends and twitter followers, a company’s logo can be exposed to potential customers. Jason even posts videos on youtube and holds webinars via his website (http://iwearyourshirt.com/) to inform people about the company that temporarily owns his chest. With over 17,000 followers on twitter, and 7,000 on facebook, he offers a business a new and innovative solution to social media coverage.

The power of a promo t-shirt has really gone global!

The demand for Sadler’s body and cheeky smile has been so great that he has had to employ someone to help him wear all those t-shirts. Sadler admits that his dream is to have to do nothing at all, but rather pay other people to do all the ‘hard work’ for him. His search for new recruits might be explained by him having to wear printed t-shirt 365 days a year and to any event, including weddings and funerals.

What the case of Jason Sadler proves is that companies are constantly looking for new ways to be innovative with their marketing strategies. By taking the hallmark of many companies PR strategies, the promotional t-shirt, and giving it a fresh twist, has Jason Sadler managed to create a job to make you all green with envy?

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The Korea Times has revealed that in Seoul, there are concerns about dress codes in the workplace. A local survey of 578 recruitment officials revealed that complaints about ‘ugly’ workplace clothing are quite different to the ones that might be seen in the West – topping the list of unpopular garments are miniskirts and low-cut dresses!

After that, men wearing V-neck shirts that show their chests are considered the most offensive to colleagues. And third on the list: see-through clothes. Amazing. It’s a whole new insight to the world of Korean offices.

Fourth on the list of unpleasantness: unwashed garments – because they make the place smell bad. Fifth, slippers with bare feet (do they mean sandals, perhaps, or are the Korean office workers actually turning up in their fluffy footwear?) and eighth – sleeveless shirts or dresses.

If this sounds amazingly trendy – don’t forget that Korean Air had its 1990s uniform designed by the late Gianfranco Ferré. And if you get told off for wearing your bunny slippers to work, say they do it in Korea!

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At a time when the ‘double dip’ is being talked about as a real possibility, recession-wise, it may seem odd to be advocating a uniform as a money-saving, and maybe even money-earning, measure, but there are four reasons that investing in a staff uniform can save money and may actually boost business.

1.    Health and Safety – there are many reasons why wearing a uniform can save a business money and safety is the main one: investing in proper footwear, specially designed clothing such as overalls or aprons and carefully chosen accessories like toolbelts, caps or gloves can mean that there are many fewer accidents which not only means less time off work with injuries but is a major force in avoiding compensation and injury claims from disgruntled employees who’ve harmed themselves in the workplace.
2.    Pocket money – literally! These days, when every penny counts, people love to be able to wear a workplace-provided uniform as it means that they don’t have to wear their own clothes in the workplace and that means they save money!
3.    Productivity – people wearing uniforms tend to waste less time in the staff toilets, checking themselves out in the mirrors – a US based time and motion study found that uniform wearing retail staff worked, on average, 27 minutes more in a day than those in their own clothing.
4.    Team building – when individuals are dressed alike, they become a team – that’s schools give children a vest to pull over their normal clothing when they are playing a team sport. Similarly, when people in the workplace are all dressed alike, even if it’s only the same printed T-shirt, they will identify as a team and be more committed to team goals.

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This month an online shopfront with a difference has opened – it’s for Pope Benedict XVI’s September trip to the UK and offers a series of mementoes: an embroidered baseball cap like the one the Pope has been seen wearing himself this summer, keyrings and fridge magnets and a range of T-shirts including one that can be personalised to include the name of the individual’s local church.

Several commentators have remarked on how similar the highly detailed printed T-shirts are to heavy metal designs and colour schemes it’s hoped they will appeal to a wide range of ‘pilgrims’ to help cover the £7 million cost of the visit.

The church is not alone in merchandising for the trip: the National Secular Society also has an online presence offering T-shirts with the slogan ‘Pope Nope’.

If your business is merchandising for an event or promotion, try thinking about how you offer your merchandise – you can use the angle of local identity, perhaps by promoting your locality, alongside your business, offering T-shirts with maps to local parks but including your shop.

Try point of sale branding if you have a physical location too, such as on sunny days giving away a baseball cap with your telephone number on it, or a rain hat or umbrella on rainy days. You can even offer a random prize for people buying in your shop or ringing up, every sixtieth customer, or whatever, can be sent a promotional T-shirt with their order, and you can give unrecognisable information about each winner (eg their first name and initial of surname, to keep within data protection rules) on your website.

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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.

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It may seem insane to be thinking about promotional jackets now – given our tropical weather – but it’s the perfect moment to consider revising your uniform so that you have jackets that meet the needs of your staff and the needs of your company.

Staff requirements from promotional jackets

1.    Easy to wear: clothing must allow the wearer to move easily, especially when undertaking tasks like loading vehicles, putting out stock, moving items of equipment etc
2.    Washable: any garment has to be fresh and clean, so ensure your choice of jacket can be machine washed so that your employees have a chance to launder their outerwear easily
3.    Breathable: in some environments a thick jacket is necessary, in others a lightweight one is better. Consider zip lining jackets or ordinary fleeces that can be worn under a waterproof jacket to allow staff to adjust their outer clothing to the conditions they experience

Brand requirements from promotional jackets

A jacket embroidered or printed with a company logo allows a brand to advertise itself, but it needs to be:

1.    substantial – so that it lasts for several years: anything too lightweight won’t be a worthwhile return on the company’s investment
2.    appropriately designed – an embroidered logo looks stylish, lasts well and gives an impression of seriousness and longevity. On the other hand, a bright over-printed jacket gives an impression of youth and freshness
3.    worn! Seriously – a jacket that the staff hate just won’t be worn in public and that means your promotional budget is wasted.

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As long as the good weather holds, people will want to be outdoors – and that means that promotional activities including outdoor cooking will be incredibly popular.  Offering burgers or hot dogs and their vegetarian equivalent can be a brilliant wheeze to get people to visit your business.

It’s easier to hire in a caterer than to do it yourself as they will have the skills to ensuring cooking and serving staff meet the demands of legislation in terms of health and safety and hygiene and that people get served swiftly and professionally.

Make sure your hired-in staff are wearing your promotional clothing: invest in T-shirts with a strong promotional message for those who are clearing tables and cleaning up. Teamed with printed aprons and logo-embroidered caps for people actually serving food, the complete clothing range means that everybody looks smart and everybody is carrying the same message that supports your business.

Take it to the max by having napkins overprinted with your business details and giving away squeezy sports drink bottles with a promo message from your firm. You can even invest in customised ‘doggy bags’ with your business name and address details on them.

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Many businesses have chosen to overhaul their workplace uniforms during the current recession and there are three reasons this may be happening:

1.    Employers want staff to feel invested in and important when times are tough, so new uniforms give them confidence and emotional support
2.    Businesses, especially retail ones, want potential customers to be able to spot a member of staff immediately so they can ask questions etc. This means the business is less likely to lose sales through a customer failing to find a staff person to serve them
3.    Customers value being looked after by uniformed staff because it makes them feel their custom is valued; so businesses with a smart uniform gain more trade in tough times.

Because uniforms only look good if they are well cared for, many companies are also setting up manuals that explain how to launder work clothing. They may also make a clothing allowance to cover the cost of caring for clothing and/or a fund for replacing worn out items. Staff can be encouraged to look after their clothes with some simple tips:

1.    Work shirts will look better for longer if you rub a little undiluted washing liquid on the collar and cuffs before washing – this removes the ground in dirt that makes these areas look dingy.
2.   Black T-shirts and other cotton items should be washed and ironed inside out to preserve the colour as long as possible.
3.    Tumble drying ages clothes fast, so line drying should be encouraged.

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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.

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