Article - Corporate Clothing
10 Jan 2018
Latest Corporate Clothing Trends in South Africa Set to Improve Branding Capacity
Corporate clothing enables the presentation of a uniform look and feel across the entire company. With well-selected uniforms, the company is able to brand externally, as customers and business partners are able to immediately identify the company’s overall brand identity. For employees, the uniforms help to instil a feeling of belonging and with a company consisting of a team of employees, this feeling translates into loyalty to the brand. In essence, the clothing serves to brand quietly.
The above being said, the modern trend is moving away from the conventional uniforms, in the sense that style now plays just as an integral role as functionality. Contemporary styles accurately reflect the overall company culture without compromising on comfort and aesthetic appeal. The main elements present in modern corporate wear are:
•Optimal comfort – functionality and easy fit are important to ensure that the uniforms are safe for the particular work environment.
•Styled to fit well – modern workers want clothing that is flattering and the trend is thus to design several styles for one company, in order to ensure that everyone can look and feel good.
•Colours – retail industries prefer fun styles and colours, whereas corporate entities go with practical and classical corporate colours, such as navy, black, grey, white and pinstripe.
•Highly durable fabrics are used in the making of the clothing – employees have to wear the uniforms daily and as such, it is essential to produce clothing that can stand daily wear and won’t stain or wrinkle easily.
Recent studies suggest that if well-selected, corporate wear can positively affect the client’s perception of the business. Brand logos give a feeling of consistency and with such, customers gain more trust and confidence in the ability of the company and its employees to meet their specific requirements. At the same time, the company can show its employees that it cares enough to ensure that they are well dressed.
With comfort being one of the main elements that employees require, the apparel is made to fit the specific job responsibilities of the employee. The right style and fabric are selected for employees that do physically demanding jobs, whilst employees working with customers throughout the day require softer fabrics that can eliminate moisture build-up.
One of the underlying motives for ensuring a perfect fit is branding. If a shirt for, instance, doesn’t fit well, the brand displays poorly, the employee loses confidence and sales drop. Recent reports have also shown that employees want to wear fashionable clothing. As such, companies have to regularly adapt their wear to stay in vogue and thus promote the image that they are keeping with the times.
Employees stylishly, yet practically and comfortably dressed in the branded wear immediately get into work mode. They are more aware of how their behaviour affects the company, even outside their workplace. As such, they become better ambassadors for the brand. With the option to have managers or fully qualified staff members wear different clothing than the trainees, it is possible to immediately identify who needs help, who is in control and who to approach for assistance.
Enforcing a corporate dress code is easier when the company has formal corporate clothing. More and more companies now invest in modern, stylish corporate wear to help distinguish their brands within their industry. As such, we now offer companies a wider range of apparel to meet their particular attire requirements.