The England team have revealed their new 2010 World Cup strip, which is based on the 1966 World Cup winning shirt. It’s a red jersey with the standard Three Lions logo which has above it a raised red embroidered star, to celebrate England’s one World Cup victory.

Using embroidery in this way is a classic style that adds intricacy without making a garment look too fussy. Standard uses for embroidery include:

Promotional wear – like the England strip described above. Because embroidery has a long pedigree, it carries echoes of tradition and ceremony. But as contemporary embroidery is designed and carried out using computer technology, there is no limit to the size, shape and colour of the text that can be sewn to a garment and still be legible.

Brand images – company logos  and monograms are commonly used on work clothing – where a personalised uniform may carry the staff member’s name as well as the company logo.

Monogramming – famously, young women embroidered their initials on sheets and pillowcases in their ‘hope’ chests and then, when they found a husband, rushed to add his initials to their monogram before the wedding. Today monogramming is seen on everything from plush towels in a spa through to the pockets of the smart shirts worn by City traders.

Embroidery is one of the most durable ways to decorate clothing, as well as being one of the most impressive looking, which is probably why the England designers have chosen to embroider the single red star, for the 1966 win, so elegantly over the England symbol on the football shirts they hope will be worn in another victorious final.

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2012 means Summer Olympics, for the UK at least.  Sports clothing retailer JJB is relying on the Olympic boost to pull it out of a slump, in part by appointing four times Olympic Gold winner Sir Matthew Pinsent as anNon-executive director.

But all businesses, not just sports retailers, can benefit from the ‘Olympic effect’.  Choosing to invest in the buzz that comes from the Olympics is a good way of building teams and creating new energy in your business. There are two ways of doing this:

1 – picking champions

You may already have sports-people in your organisation – at a much lower level than the Olympic standard. But investing in them and setting up support systems can encourage all your staff to see that you believe in their talents and personal development. Companies can do this by:

1.    Sponsoring a local event like a fun run, or a youth football team, or offering to pay for branded sports clothing for an amateur sports team, whether they are darts players or netballers.
2.    Getting staff involved in supporting a local football or other team by organising visits to watch matches and investing in promotional clothing that says ‘X business is supporting Y team’ which can be worn in the workplace.
3.    Funding a skills development day for local sports people – bringing in a trainer to help sporty types to improve their performance and setting up a stall about your business and what it has to offer alongside the sports work.

2 – making champions

Getting an entire business involved in healthy activity can sound impossible, but if you make active life part of the personal development of all your staff, it bring rewards because they take less time off, have more energy and a great team spirit. Companies can do this by:

1.    Picking a range of sports: swimming, running and a ball sport are the best options, and offering staff a range of ways of engaging with them.     Some companies offer an extra half hour lunchbreak once a week for people who go to the local pool and swim during that time.  Others set up after work ball games and provide printed T-shirts and sporting equipment for staff to take to the local park.
4.    Some businesses sponsor a charity and get all employees involved in a fun run or sponsored walk with special motivational branded clothing that links the business to the good cause and creates recognition in the public of the way the company is supporting the local community.

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Starting in San Francisco, but taking the world by (quiet) storm at present, what Americans call workwear is the big fashion story at present. The kind of clothing that was worn by cowboys and farmers, factory hands and forestry workers has become a huge fashion statement.

It seems that fashion responds to our primal urges and what most people want now is a job, or at least to look as if they’ve got one, and that means that the basic uniform of the manual worker or tradesman has become one of the most popular fashion looks around.

What’s hot

If your staff wear high-vis clothing, then green is the new black, the bright lime-green used in High Visibility vests was all over the catwalks at the beginning of the year, but glowing orange was nowhere to be seen.

Caterpillar and other work boots, worn with thick cushioned work socks turned down over the top of the boot cuff, were also much in evidence.

The old blue-collar of blue collar workers is trending as a huge hit. Work shirts in shades of blue are outselling other colours three to one in Japan! Worn with the sleeves rolled up, these durable work shirts are not in factories but in the bars and clubs frequented by Japan’s students.

What’s not

Anything too light or lightweight has been ruled out – chunky sweatshirts and heavy boiler suits are in, as are thick work trousers with cargo pockets but right out are thin cotton trousers, slip on shoes and skinny jackets.

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Clothing carries a lot of social symbology – the hoodie, reviled as the clothing choice of anti-social youth, is also the garment of choice for the boxing fraternity, in fact it’s hard to find a picture of Amir Khan clothed, where he’s wearing anything else!

T-shirts are seen as the casual clothing chosen by those who are relaxed and out to have a good time, which is why Durham City Council has chosen them as a reward for good behaviour over Christmas.  When drinkers in city pubs by food or a non-alcoholic drink, they are being offered a black T-shirt with an image that resembles a rock band logo, saying Best Bar None, and the hope is that it will cut alcohol related crime by reducing binge drinking. Carol Feenan, Durham County Council Best Bar None Manager, said, ‘The free T-shirts are proving extremely popular amongst both customers and staff alike.’

So if clothing carries such strong images, what does your company’s uniform say about you? Would a new style polo-shirt improve your image of efficiency and calm, or perhaps smarter shirts with an embroidered monogram would help create the air of upmarket service that you wish to convey? Maybe your casual friendly attitude would be better conveyed by a slimline fleece than your current bulky jackets? Choosing uniforms that convey the right social symbology can really help your business generate the right impression.

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The California-based Hoelzer Reich apparel company has been banned from sponsoring fighters at future UFC and WEC (cage and martial arts fights) events in the UK. Concerns were raised over the company’s “German-themed” apparel worn by fighters as they entered the ring – the symbols used on a shirt worn by a boxer at the weekend appeared to resemble the Iron Cross and a logo closely resembling the SS emblem.

One problem is that such symbology is obviously offensive to many people and using it unintentionally on corporate clothing, or as part of a uniform, could mean a disastrous PR result.

Another problem is that designers, especially young ones, tend to like to work with edgy, provocative material, while businesses trying to build respect and loyalty want solid, respectful symbolism – a lightning flash on a polo-shirt collar might look like it represents speed to the designer, but to the general public it can look very much like a Nazi SS reference.

This is why it’s important, when designing corporate clothing, promotional T-shirts or uniforms, to do some product testing with the workforce and with the public. This can also be a great way to get good publicity – select a short list of designs and ask your customers to vote on which polo-shirt they think your staff would look best in, or offer them a range of T-shirt designs to pick from and give the person who manages to put them in the same preference order as your CEO a prize. While the publicity is good, what’s even better is that you don’t make any mistakes about logos or symbols that then come back to bite you.

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We all know that branding and sponsorship go hand in hand, and that the world’s sporting stars are so heavily branded and sponsored it’s amazing they can stay upright under the weight of all the decals and logos. So how can you get some of this action for yourself?

Look for local opportunities. One small local firm sponsors branded aprons for the children at a local primary school to wear during arts and domestic science activities. Every year the best artist and best cook are celebrated in a school assembly where their names are added to a school cup and they are given special T-shirts to wear during the classes, to commemorate their success. It brings great local brand recognition, helps support local education, and results in local news coverage every year when the presentation is made.

Run competitions. A sandwich delivery firm runs regular ‘invent the sarnie’ competitions for its customers. The best sandwich filling is made, a free sandwich with that filling is given to the winning customer every day for a week and he or she is filmed in a company branded hat and T-shirt eating their winnings! Again, this results in good local press coverage, with details of the competition being announced on local radio each time it’s run, and it builds customer loyalty.

This kind of sponsorship may not be quite as good as having Jensen Button on your team, but the rewards can be substantial.

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If you’re having T-shirts printed for a works do, or as uniform items, or for sports team wear, there are several things you can do to make sure they are sure fire winners with the people who will be wearing them

When choosing your T-shirt design, consult those who will be wearing the garment you’re ordering – in one case, a small firm ordered T-shirts that turned out to be very unpopular with their staff. In fact, several people refused to wear them. Why? Because the colours chosen looked similar to a local football team, but the staff were supporters of a rival club – wearing the T-shirts, in their minds, made them look like fans of the opposition.

Make sure you understand what your team or staff will be doing in the printed garments you order. Sometimes a collar is more appropriate because people want to look smarter – in that case a printed polo shirt may be more popular than a T-shirt.

Place a small sample order and give them to some people to wear when going about their normal activities. This sometimes reveals that your chosen T-shirt is too short or too long, fits too tightly or too loosely – by choosing a different design or manufacture of T-shirt you can improve the comfort of those wearing it, thus making them much happier with their work or sportswear.

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Whether it’s the distinctive uniform of Eton, or the mad get-up of Ronald McDonald, uniform is a key element of team success. That’s why sports teams have identifiable mascots in outsize costumes – because they are a focus of team identity.

Schools use uniforms to identify their pupils, and the more exclusive the school, the more distinctive the uniform will be. The Alfred Marks recruitment agency, in the 1950s insisted that all its secretaries went to work in white gloves because it distinguished an Alfred Marks temp from those of any other company.

So uniform both picks people out, and gives them a sense of identity. While it may be as simple as a T-shirt and apron for a guy throwing pizzas through to the full overalls and work boots of an exhaust fitter, or a carefully monogrammed shirt and suit for a hotel receptionist, uniform clothing helps your team to feel united and to recognise their place in the huge machine that is the world of work. Similarly, team uniforms for sport are vital to helping create a united spirit – and the reward of wearing the yellow jersey, for a cyclist, or swapping shirts with an opponent on the football field is recognised as a huge incentive to perform well during team events.

Giving your team a uniform need not be expensive, but it can bring huge rewards in terms of group cohesion and motivation.

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Just about everybody is now ‘back-to-school’. After the trauma of the ‘kitting out’ where sulky or terrified children are kitted out with school uniform items, with or without their cooperation, comes the next stage – the losing, destroying or rejecting the clothing that has cost so much time, money and tears.

One way to help your child through this stage, and to help the planet too, is to educate them about organic clothing and get them involved in thinking about how their clothing is made, why a uniform is worn and how they can benefit the environment by choosing organic options for themselves and maybe even getting a school-wide campaign going to support the wearing of organic cotton items such as organic T-shirts for PE or performing groups like school bands who can be outfitted in organic cotton clothing in a very cost-effective fashion.

Online retailers are now a great way to outfit children in eco-friendly clothing for a very reasonable price.  Knowing that their clothing is benefiting the planet can often help children, especially fashion-conscious ones, become reconciled to a uniform they hate because if they are teased by their friends about wearing the school issue uniform, such as white polo-shirt and navy trousers, they can say ‘Well okay, it’s not stylish, but it is organic and that means it’s preventing the use of pesticides, and stopping people in the developing world being exposed to toxic chemicals.’

Looked at in this way, a plain white T-shirt becomes a statement about caring for the planet and can remove a lot of the stigma that children feel if they don’t have the most up to date fashions, because they can assert that they are choosing to toe the line with organic clothing items for ethical reasons and that anybody who tries to tease them for it is simply showing their own selfishness and lack of care about the world in general.

For the environmentally conscious child, this can become a major issue in accepting the role of uniform as a sustainable way of not wasting clothing or going to unnecessary expense to attend school, and that can give the ‘green child’ a real boost in getting back into the school routine. And it can stop the loss and damage to school items that would otherwise be dropped, cut, abandoned or otherwise rejected.

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What happens in the USA today, happens here tomorrow, and a recent set of surveys show that the world of promotional gift-giving is changing.

While giving promotional gifts, especially pens and clothing, has become such an accepted part of doing business that people barely consider them gifts now, the more expensive gift items that were being handed around a few years ago, have come under suspicion.

There have been a few currently low-profile cases where people have been asked to step down from roles, both governmental and business, because they were soliciting, or being influenced by, gifts. Now these are substantially more than the odd memory stick or T-shirt, let’s be honest, but the trend is developing for many people in sectors that cross over into accepting or giving out public funds (charities, local government, schools, police etc) to declare all gifts in annual reports, and that really does mean down to the last baseball cap.  All that’s excluded is consumables under a certain market value, so a bottle of scotch must be declared but a packet of sticky notepads isn’t.

In 2007 the retention response (ie remembering the name of the business) was 17% in relation to branded gifts and promotional clothing – better than print, television or internet advertising.  Clothing is the most commonly given item of branded giftware.

The other area where corporate gifts are being scrutinised is in companies that are on the stock market. Shareholders are increasingly aware of the brand promotion budget and are driving down the value of giveaways – branded MP3 players were common promotional items in 2007/8 but they have declined in popularity because of the high unit cost. T-shirts, polo-shirts and baseball caps have all held their share of the market, branded business stationery has decreased (possibly as it’s become clear that more senior people work from home or hot-desk so the gift isn’t getting to the decision maker) but winter clothing, from hats to scarves to fleeces, and bags, have both shown an increase, which reflects the recognition that fewer people are tied to offices now and promotional clothing that helps them get to and from work is a great way to market your company and build retention response.

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