Archive for October, 2008
The fashion sector has changed unbelievably in the past ten years: the discount fashion sector has experienced a boom, and major supermarket chains have picked up a large share of the clothing market. But this year, low consumer confidence has affected sales across the board. Increasing competition between the discount, supermarket, and designer clothing sectors, all fighting for the same consumers has become intense. Friends of the Earth say that sales of new clothing in the UK have increased by 60% in the last ten years, largely due to the rise in budget high street stores. But that could be about to change.
So what have de-toxing, pre-loving and swishing got to do with it? Such concepts encourage shoppers to think both before and after they buy. They are systems where people get together and swap unwanted items and create new outfits that they model before the rest of the group, getting suggestions on accessories or other items being swished that would work well together. Supports say it makes you creative, developing your personal sense of style. So how does it work?
Let’s say you have a wardrobe full of T-shirts and want to get a new look but don’t have much money. Gather up a bunch of friends and the clothes they no longer want or never wore and swap – your plain white tee shirt could end up under a long evening jacket, or a collared top you never really felt comfortable in could look fantastic on your best friend or your mum. These systems of clothes swapping allow you to take budget items and make a dozen new looks: a black T-shirt with a floral skirt, a pair of boots and hat that turn a long-sleeved top into a fashion hit or even a bit of cross-dressing, going through your man’s wardrobe and seeing which of his tees you can mix and match with your own clothing.
October 30th, 2008
Fruit of the Loom is an American company which manufactures clothing, particularly underwear but also a range of ‘utility’ clothing including T-shirts, sweatshirts and other active and casualwear. Establishing in Bowling Green, Kentucky, there are Fruit of the Loom factories across the USA, South America, Europe and North Africa.
Fruit of the Loom’s main business is in manufacturing underwear, printable polo-shirts and fleece clothing. In fact they supply most of the activewear industry, casualwear, women’s jeanswear and childrenswear.
Signature Style
Because Fruit of the Loom sells its products to others ranging from major discount chains who retail it without printing, and mass merchandisers, wholesale clubs and screenprinters, all of whom overprint the clothing – called blanks – before retailing it, the signature style of the company is that it has no style. It’s one of the biggest anonymous success stories in retailing – and for most people, the only time they know that their garment is Fruit of the Loom is when they look at the neck label.
Why we love them
Fruit of the Loom offers an unconditional guarantee on all the products it sells. In fact, word for word, here’s what they say: If you are not satisfied with any Fruit of the Loom product, return it to Fruit of the Loom. You will receive a new one, if available, or your money back.
The brand is also loved for its weird logo of Fruit Guys – made up of an apple, purple and green grapes, currants and leaves (yes, you’d be right to think those last three are all the same thing) its animated advertisements have been popular in the USA for decades.
Dissenting voices
Around the world, there have been concerns about this company’s overseas labour – in previous years it has been criticised by the International Textile Garments and Leather Workers Federation as having “a history of virulent anti-union activity” as well as subjecting employees to long hours, “poverty pay” and dangerous conditions. This condemnation has been particularly levelled at the El Salvador factories.
October 28th, 2008
It all started in the 1950s. Until then, unless you were very poor, you wore clothing that was made for your sex – women wore skirts and men wore suits. End of story. And then the teenager was invented and everything changed.
Girls wore jeans, and T-shirts, and (gasp) leather jackets! And they looked great in them. Even Doris Day, epitome of the good girl, wore men’s pyjamas in her films.
So why is the look so successful? Well one answer is psychological and the other is fashion related. Let’s deal with the fashion one first.This argument says that since 1950 female clothing has only been designed for women, but male clothing has been designed to be borrowed by women! So a guy’s favourite rugby shirt is actually not a guy’s shirt at all, but a unisex garment. Similarly, new garments ‘invented’ since then, have always been unisex in cut and fit, so the hoodie can be purchased as a lady-fit hoodie or a unisex hoodie but there is no such thing as a male hoodie – which does make a certain kind of sense, because when you look at advertising, you’re as likely to see a woman dressed in a supposedly masculine garment as you are a guy, but you never see a bloke in his girlfriend’s jeans, do you?
The other argument is somewhat nasty. It says that the reason men respond to women in other men’s clothing has nothing to do with how cute they look, but everything to do with the subconscious message that this women has lost her clothes – in other words, it’s about the likelihood of her having been naked in the recent past and not about how good she looks now! And if it’s true, it means that all the ladies who wander around in their boyfriend’s comfortable T-shirts are actually giving of the message to other men that they are keen to take their clothes off … <–>
October 23rd, 2008
Students courtesy of Wagner T Cassimiro
For many of us, this autumn isn’t going to be splurge time on winter clothing: college students in particular are going to be wondering how far a grant will stretch, as heating prices are set to escalate and food prices are around 15% up on last term. But autumn is also a time when many of us re-assess our appearance and move from the casual to the more stylish, both because it’s colder and because we feel more professional and less laid-back when the sunshine leaves us.
So what can you do to look good on a budget?
Layering clothing is still top style – and the good news about layering is twofold: more layers keep you warmer and you can add just one or two new items and make last year’s wardrobe look brand new. Top picks for the autumn for women are cool coloured camisoles (white, mint and palest blue) under tartan lumberjack tops, and fitted short-sleeved shirts with long-sleeved t-shirts underneath. For men, ‘Brideshead’ pastel colours are hot and still hard to find: look out for soft pink and pastel blue rugby shirts, under which you can sling a similarly light coloured tee-shirt.
Blazers and fitted jackets are re-appearing, particularly the other ‘Brideshead’ item, the fitted tweed jacket for women, these look very good worn with jeans, fitted t-shirts and a floaty scarf. For men, the jacket needs to be worn with a round necked tee or sweatshirt underneath, it’s a ‘no-collar’ look this year.
October 21st, 2008
At this time of year thousands upon thousands of council workers, up and down the land, trade in their high-vis waistcoat for their high-vis jacket. Cyclists and bikers, who’ve been taking their life in their hands all summer, remember with pleasure their high visibility waterproofs, and young people find their school coats have sprouted reflective armbands or even whole children’s high-vis vests in luminous yellow.
High visibility clothing saves a life a day, so ROSPA claims, and this includes road accidents, industrial accidents, and injuries to those in the response services who have to deal with everybody else’s problems.
Children’s Hi-Vis, in particular, are responsible for many fewer young people being hit by cars as they walk home from school in the dusk. Safety clothing doesn’t only save lives in potential accidents. Actually putting on high vis clothing or safety wear causes the person concerned to think about the task they are about to perform, meaning that the focus on potential risks more carefully than they would if they were casually dressed.
But high-vis is also high impact, and having a workforce that is clearly identified as professional and ‘on the job’ can reduce delays in a hundred areas from deliveries through to site inspections or even getting projects signed off. Why, because we’re all trained to respond to certain signals, and when we see a person in high-visibility gear we assume they’re either in charge or in a hurry, so we tend to deal with them before we deal with other people who are less obviously marked out as being busy or important!
October 16th, 2008
We regret to announce that prices will finally be going up on Polo-shirts.co.uk. We have held out for 3 years, keeping our prices rock bottom, but due to many external forces we have eventually had to increase prices on certain brands and products.
Why are clothing prices increasing?
Suppliers have put their prices up
Our suppliers have put their prices up to a level that we have had to reflect in our own prices. Brands that have, or will be increasing their prices include Stedman and Fanshirt. Baseball caps have also increased because of supplier costs.
Cotton prices have gone up
Less cotton has been planted in 2008 than in recent years. This is largely due to U.S farmers switching to more lucrative crops. Last year global demand outstripped supply by about a million tons, and with less cotton planted this inbalance has only got worse. This is having a massive impact on the price of cotton, which is used in T-Shirts, Polo-Shirts and just about all promotional clothing.
The Exchange rate
Sterling is falling against the dollar which is having an impact on most UK industries, and wholesale clothing is no exception.
Manufacturing costs
Rising energy and fuel prices have massively increased the cost of running a factory. Therefore, clothing factories, already working on tight margins have increased their prices to reflect this.
The Global Credit Crunch
The Global credit crunch has reached the clothing industry, especially the Cheap T-Shirt manufacturers who are finding it harder to raise finance in the current financial climate
Beat the credit crunch
Although we are having to increase prices we continue to bring you the best value clothing around whilst guaranteeing high quality garments. In a time when inflation is putting more and more pressure on your wallet why not give our value clothing a try? We sell many t-shirts for £2 and less, far below most high street prices. Buy in bulk and our prices get even lower. Although our prices may be going up we are still the best place to find high quality bargains from basic plain t shirts to Sweatshirts and Fleece Jackets
October 15th, 2008
According to the Daily Mail, this winter’s top fashion buy is … the polo-shirt!
Driven by a peculiar combination of credit-crunch bargain-hunting which makes the adaptable, easy-wash polo shirt a real winner in style and economy stakes and sudden popularity with as disparate a collection of style leaders as this year’s top indie bands, fashion icon Agyness Deyn and, apparently, Amy Winehouse, the polo-shirt is on top form. Fashion predictions are that the hit colours for women will be lime green and yellow polo-shirts, while men can expect to receive many pastel polo-shirts in their Christmas stockings – it’s being dubbed the ‘Brideshead effect’ and is likely to mean that blue, mint and pink polo-shirts are all the rage.
For the workplace too, polo-shirts seem to be winning friends and influencing people, from David Cameron’s dress down polo-shirt when he’s out meeting constituency people, through to John McCain’s stroll through Baghdad in a blue polo-shirt and bulletproof vest, contenders are making use of the polo-shirt to show their ‘reality’ to the voters. It must be working, at least for the shirts, because reports say polo-shirt sales are up 40% at John Lewis, that arbiter of what the British public really, really wants!
October 13th, 2008
At polo-shirts.co.uk we strive to please our customers, and we invite everyone who purchases from us to give us feedback that will help us improve our customer service. We’re delighted with our latest google rating – which is measured entirely independently – which tells us that we’ve achieved 4.8 out of 5 from our Google checkout users.
Of course we already knew that we were giving people what they wanted, at prices they valued, with service that exceeded their expectations, because our customers told us so in the comments they left for us on our comments page but it’s great to have an outside confirmation that we’re meeting our aims.
And we’re not taking our success lightly, we intend to continue improving our offering and our service so that everybody who buys from us continues to be as happy as our past customers have been.
