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Picture courtesy of www.sbs.com.au
Oh mon dieu! You will not believe what some of our French friends have been using printed T-shirts for…..Only to help smuggle drugs!
After a high speed car chase, police in Marseille inspected the contents of the criminal’s car after he had fled the scene. In addition to finding half a kilogram of cannabis, police were also puzzled to find a bag full of printed T-shirts in the abandoned vehicle. After later inspection it was discovered that the text on the shirts matched the registration numbers of unmarked police cars used in the Marseille area.
It is suspected that the T-shirts were to be distributed amount drug dealers as a way to help each other avoid discovery and certain arrest. A representative of the police trade union commented on how drug dealers would normally use graffiti on walls as a means of avoiding the uncover vehicles and would reserve printed clothes for witty insults. Oooh la la!.
If you read this story, you might think that I’m suggesting to people that using clothes2order could be a great way to keep a secret drug empire under wraps. That wasn’t my intention (please don’t!). I was purely trying to keep you up-to-date with the weird and wonderful world of T-shirts. I hope you enjoyed!
I am the American Dream, Mrs Federline, Brunettes are so hot right now, He loves me
In my opening blog, I made you a promise that I would bring you some inspiration and a bit of fun. Well who better to provide both than Britney Spears! It seems that she is the leading celebrity in wearing printed t-shirts…
Now I know taking fashion advice from a woman who has shaved her head and been booked into a psychiatric ward might seem a little strange but if there is one think this pop princess definitely knows, its how to make a statement. In her life of flashing light bulbs and paparazzi, Britney is well aware of all the stories that the press have been writing about her. When everyone wants a piece of her, its seems she wants her T-shirt to do all the talking for her.
For Britney it seems the best way to get something off your chest, is to get it printed on it. So if you got something bothering you, get it out of your mind and down on fabric! Have a look at our printable t-shirts.
With the econo
my 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?
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!
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.
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.
Choosing a uniform for your workforce or charity that suits both men and women takes a little consideration.
The recent hot weather in the UK has been highlighting the differences between men and women and the way that they wear their uniforms. Several unions have received requests from women members for a review of uniform policy in the workplace after men have been allowed to wear either lightweight summer vests or to remove clothing on the upper body entirely during work breaks, but women have not been allowed to wear ‘bikini’ or ‘tankini’ tops.
The issue appears to be one of sexual equality, but the female workers say that it’s actually a temperature-related concern – men are allowed to wear less, and so they are finding it easier to cope with the heat; women are required to wear more and so they are suffering more from the effects of temperature increases.
Last year, Kent women police officers raised concerns that their compulsory uniforms were too revealing, clinging to their cleavages and causing ribald remarks when they were out on the beat.
To choose the right uniform:
• Involve women in the selection of clothing items
• Be sensitive to cultural differences – some women like to cover up, some are happy to flash the flesh, but men may also be modest or exhibitionist – try to offer a range of tops from long-sleeved shirts through to vests so that everybody can choose what suits them
• Remember that colours can affect comfort – clothing items such as white T-shirts can be revealing and tight clothing such as tailored trousers can accentuate the body.
The success of the massive American TV show Glee has led to an increased interest in the idea of the glee club. A glee club is a musical group, usually dressed identically in a bright uniform, that sings short songs – traditionally in trios or quartets, and amazingly, the very first Glee Club was founded at Harrow School, in London in 1787!
Today the glee club is being used to promote workplace harmony – literally. Big companies are using the staff room dynamic to encourage teams to form, sing a song and get marks out of ten from the rest of the staff during lunch-breaks. It’s become so competitive in some places that unions are looking at the effect of ‘glee bullying’ and glee-style T-shirts are becoming popular in big factories
And if you don’t want your workforce singing on the job, recent research has shown that the colour orange inspires most workplace optimism and even as simple a thing as changing the colour of a logo embroidered on a work polo-shirt to orange can be enough to create a feeling of positive expectation and dynamism in the workforce.
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.
Cheap clothing, whether it’s a fashion item or wholesale clothing bought for uniform items, may not be much of a bargain after all.
The environmental cost of such clothing is extremely high – from the cost of shipping to the environmental impact of cheap but damaging dyes, through to the wear and throw away attitudes it’s created in a generation that believes clothing is a disposable item, not an investment.
This attitude can also damage the way that young people wear and look after uniforms or promotional clothing. They may fail to recognise that their work apparel needs to be treated with care, washed or cleaned regularly, hung up when not being worn etc. Younger employees – those under twenty – are two-thirds more likely to request more work clothing because they have lost or damaged their uniform than the rest of the workforce.
One way to address this problem is to provide a clothing budget that each staff member can manage for themselves – a member of staff may choose to buy one really good work jacket or two or three cheaper printed hoodies. This allows those who value their workwear and keep it in good condition to use their personal budget to buy better quality items while those who are constantly losing or damaging their uniform clothing can be encouraged to buy cheaper items such as printed T-shirts which don’t place such a strain on the budget when they are lost, torn or stained.
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Customised Uniforms | Promotional Clothing | Embroidered Polo Shirts | Printed T-Shirts | Embroidered Shirts | Personalised Sweatshirts | Promotional Fleeces | Embroidered Clothing | Screen Printed Clothing
Transfer and Cad Cut Printed Clothing | T-Shirt Printing | Cheap Clothes
Customised Uniforms | Promotional Clothing | Embroidered Polo Shirts | Printed T-Shirts | Embroidered Shirts | Personalised Sweatshirts | Promotional Fleeces | Embroidered Clothing | Screen Printed Clothing
Transfer and Cad Cut Printed Clothing | T-Shirt Printing | Cheap Clothes