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The bottom is falling out of markets for everything from mortgages to mohair scarves – even cheap and cheerful Woolworths is not immune.
What effect will the new thrifty behaviour of consumers have on our clothing?
School uniforms are suddenly popular with parents who can see ways to save money by ensuring their kids wear the agreed clothing which is usually a lot cheaper than fashion wear. Uniforms have seen a boost too, as staff benefit from not having to wear their own clothes to the office, but what about those who do have to dress for work or college from their own budgets and want to impress without breaking the bank?
- Organic clothing matters – ethical wear is going to be increasingly important as people want to be sure that what they buy with their hard-earned cash, isn’t causing misery elsewhere in the world.
- Vintage returns – the hoodie your uncle Dave wore the year skateboards were invented, and your mum’s old ‘Material Girl’ T-shirt are suddenly back in fashion. Because vintage clothing has stood the test of time, it’s a good investment and rather than just being ‘old’ or ‘second-hand’ it has the cachet of being ‘previously loved’. Be careful though, just because it’s old, doesn’t mean it’s vintage – T-shirts from lousy television series in the 1980s still won’t get you anything but sneers and jeers.
- Shopping with a list delivers the goods – just as we shouldn’t go food shopping without a list, we shouldn’t buy clothes without one either. List what you have, then list what you need and buy that, not anything else. Shops are designed to lure you into purchases you don’t really need, so buying online can save you a fortune. If you have three pairs of blue jeans, perhaps you need a pair of black trousers? If you have four white polo-shirts, perhaps you need a black polo? The thing is, once you get into the shop, you’re seduced by what you already know you like and you leave with blue jeans and another white polo and whoops … money gone and still none of the clothes you need.
- Classic crowns them all – or why black is always the new black. The reason that classic colours and styles persist from year to year is their incredible ability to make most people look good most of the time. A black top, unless you have dandruff, is slimming and stylish – what’s not to like about that?
is the UK’s largest online clothing wholesaler* and we are looking for partners around the world.
If you are a clothing distributor holding stocks of polo shirts, t-shirts, sweatshirts and other clothing products, you could be the perfect partner for us. We’re seeking companies to work with in France, Italy, Spain, Germany and the USA.
We offer:
The opportunity to dramatically increase your online sales
We sell your product ranges on line through our web sites
We pass the orders to you for fulfilment.
What’s the catch?
We collect payments online, deduct our commission and pass the orders to you – it’s as simple as that. There really is no catch, we are online specialist and we have customers all over the world who want to buy the products we sell, but import taxes and transport charges means that it is not economically worthwhile to supply from our UK distribution centre.
What’s your commitment?
Supply us with pictures of your product range and product description
Fulfil orders as they arrive
Answer any customer enquiries.
If you are interested in this opportunity, please email: partners@polo-shirts.co.uk today!
* - based on statistics from Hitwise.co.uk
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.
You may not even know what clothblocking is, but you do it, we all do. It’s the instantaneous judgement we make about somebody when we first see them and it affects the romantic and job prospects of us all. Here are the top 5 clothing mistakes that cause an employer, or potential girlfriend, to clothblock a bloke:
- Designer sunglasses – unless you’re a pimp or a drug dealer. Seriously, the designer sunglasses wearer has passed beyond metrosexual into the twilight
- Denim shorts – these are called jorts in the
- Crocs – neither bosses nor potential life partners are likely to smile at the sight of crocs, unless you happen to be a fishing boat captain and you’ve only just walked ashore.
- Owning nothing but polo-shirts. The problem with this one is that you’ve misled people – your new employer or your new gf both have every right to expect that you own a couple of shirts, and if you don’t written warnings and stormy walkouts will result – basically if you only own T-shirts and polo-shirts, you’re a slob through and through. Buy a shirt … and a tie!
- Sleeveless shirts – if ladies with bingo wings put you off, look down. Armpit hair is a total turn off, in the social and the business environment, and waxing your armpits so you can wear sleeveless shirts is just too weird. Short sleeves at a minimum, long sleeves in the office are better still.
Crocs courtesy of sailorbill
A strange thing happens when the sun comes out. British men develop a weird virus, it spreads from one to another with more rapidity than a zombie’s bite and it has a terrible effect on them all.
They come out in gaudy shirts.
Neon colours, weird sticky textures, odious patterns that could give an epileptic person a fit, and above all, huge banners with a date and some utterly meaningless event ‘Summer ’97 Auditors’ Bash’ for example, turn up on their fronts and backs.
Why does this happen?
It’s impossible to be sure. Perhaps the sun does something strange to their brains or their vision, because these are men who manage to wear perfectly decent, even stylish, clothing for the rest of the year. Perhaps the heat addles their sense of humour so that they can’t see what a joke they are in their glowing Hawaiian tops.
It’s very much worse in the USA than here, where most men know that exposing lily-white arms (or even worse, legs) is bad enough, but doing so against a colour palate of hot pink, lime green, bright blue and sickly yellow is a total disaster. In America, for some reason, there’s a sense of pride in hanging chalky-white limbs out on the first warm day, and exposing the winter body to the air swathed only in chino shorts and a shirt like cheap Christmas wrapping paper.
What can be done?
It’s very simple. Men should understand the rules:
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No more than three colours to a single shirt
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Tropical flowers, canoes against the sunset and lizards on rocks belong on
Hawaii, not on your back on a Hawaiian shirt -
White, black, red and blue are good solid colours – when it doubt, pick one and stick to it, polo-shirts look good if they are plain or striped or maybe chequered, but not with monster trucks, hula dancers or cartoon characters imprinted on them (if you can’t name the cartoon character or read the writing, don’t wear it - there are at least a thousand men wandering around in black polo-shirts that bear the legend ’I am an illiterate westerner’ in white kanji script!)
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Try on your summer shirt with a teenager (either sex) in the room. If they smirk, put it in the bin and go back to the rules.
Summer shirt courtesy of cogdogblog
The must-have souvenirs in Washington this week include I love the pope bumper stickers, Property of Benedict XVI T-shirts and mugs emblazoned with the pope’s heavenward gaze, all being snapped up by Roman Catholics who visited the capital ahead of Pope Benedict XVI’s visit. Many hoped that Benedict would bless rosaries and other religious articles at Thursday’s Mass. Merchandise licensed by the archdioceses of
And George? Well he’s been the victim of a scam that was nipped in the bud. A pair of Milanese forgers have just been charged with trying to sell a men’s fashion and accessories collection branded as Exclusively GC and designed by George Clooney. While the first response was that this was an April Fool’s Day hoax, police in Milan later found watches and garments that would have gone on sale if the scam hadn’t been stopped. Clooney told reporters in Rome, ‘If someone tries to sell you clothes or watches that are based on me, don’t buy them.’
Pope Benedict courtesy of Beyond Forgetting
Going to the Masters Golf Tournament is a grail for many golfers, and nearly everybody who does attend wants to capture the memory with Masters souvenirs. Possibly the only place on earth where men outshop women is the Masters Gift Shop. Favourite gifts include Masters branded polo shirts for family members and cheaper printed T-shirts to take back for friends and neighbours.
Why so much fuss?
Because you can’t buy Masters memorabilia online – it’s purchasable on the course, on the day, or not at all and this rarity factor means that some people can lose their heads. This year one golf fan spent $1,200 (£600) on his souvenirs in under five minutes.
And what do the players think?
Well, Tiger Woods is pretty well all in favour – his wardrobe for the Masters is ‘scripted’ by Nike, several months in advance, along with the wardrobes of all their other contract players: Paul Casey, Trevor Immelman, Justin Leonard, Stephen Ames and K.J. Choi. This happens because correlating the clothing of eight to ten players so that they don’t all look like they’re wearing a uniform.
Nike’s athletes seem to like the clothes-scripting process. Most of them tried on and approved the garments they are wearing this week back in February, in a special Nike ‘outfitting’ van during the Accenture Match Play Championship.
Masters tournament courtesy of johntrainor