Corporate clothing is a wonderful promotional tool. But bad branding is like getting a tattoo on your face. You had better be sure before you take the plunge.
Many companies use
corporate clothing to help enhance their corporate image and also use
corporate clothing as uniforms. Companies have large spends on corporate identity, but sometimes get unstuck when it comes to applying their branding to their
corporate clothing.
Here are some check points when branding your
corporate clothing.
1. Know Your Company Logo
A logo is made up of the design, but also the pantone colours.
Some designs are made with print in mind, but cannot be easily embroidered. We have a client who entered into a joint venture and had
lounge shirts done for the project. The designer added text to the bottom of the logo. When we converted the logo into an embroidery format we saw that the letters would have merged into each other making the letting illegible. So we had to recommend to the client that they alter their logo to allow for bigger lettering.
When you have a logo designed asked the designer, what pantone colours match the logo. Pantone is an international numbering system for inks. When you know your pantone, you can ensure that you
corporate clothing always has the correct colour. Embroidery threads do not match pantone colours, but using a pantone reference books embroiderer’s get the closes thread match for you.
When you send through your logo, make sure that you have a high resolution good quality logo. The better the quality of the logo, the better the quality of the branding.
2. Know the difference between different kinds of branding
Embroidery on
corporate clothing
Embroidery is when the logo is made of masses of tiny stitches. Almost like colouring in the logo with a needle and thread onto your corporate clothing. Embroidery adds a quality and expensive look to corporate clothing.
Embroidery can be cost effective if your logo is small. But don’t scrimp on stich count. If your embroidery quote looks very low as why. Some embroiderers’ compete only on price and use few stitches, so that they will appear to be cheaper, but that is all that it is, cheap and cheap does not enhance a brand. There must be sufficient stitches to cover the area and not have bit of fabric peeking through your logo.
You would use embroidery of jackets, lounge shirts, fleece, caps and jerseys. In the motoring industry embroidery is often used on pit shirts.
Heat Transfer on corporate clothing
Heat transfer printing is a method of printing fibres with disperses dyes. The dyes are designed and are then transferred from pre-printed paper onto a fabric by contact heat and then the dyes are absorbed by the fabric.
Heat transfer is great for producing clear and very well defined images. It works almost like an iron on label, but on a much bigger scale. Heat transfers are commonly used when you need to put a photo onto a garment. It is generally more costly than silk screening. However if there is a lot of definition, then heat transfers can be cheaper than silk -screening.
Silk-screening on corporate clothing
Screen printing is a printing technique that uses a woven mesh to support an ink-blocking stencil to receive a desired image. The attached stencil forms open areas of mesh that transfer ink or other printable materials which can be pressed through the mesh as a sharp-edged image onto a substrate.
A fill blade or squeegee is moved across the screen stencil, forcing or pumping ink into the mesh openings for transfer by capillary action during the squeegee stroke. Basically, it is the process of using a stencil to apply ink onto a substrate, whether it is t-shirts, posters, stickers, vinyl, wood, or other material.
The vast majority of t-shirts are branded using silk screening. Although you can silk screen a number of corporate clothing items, it is not as durable as embroidery, so it is more likely to be used on low cost corporate clothing items such as conti-suits and t-shirts.
3. Know how costing works for branding on corporate clothing
Whatever branding you are using for corporate clothing, there is always a set up cost.
This is the cost to set up the machine to work on your job. A machine or silk screener can only work on one job at a time. For embroidery your logo has to be programmed into the machines. For silk-screening, the screens have to be placed onto the frames. The process where the machine operator or silk-screening sets up the work station is called the set up and you are charged for this.
Some companies will build this cost into the cost of their garments, so it is not visible, but this cost always exists. As the set up cost is done at the start of each job, you can divide this cost by the total number of corporate clothing items that you are branding.
For embroidery your costs are calculated by working out many stitches it takes to colour in your logo. This means that the bigger your logo on your corporate clothing, the more stitches will be used and the higher the cost of your logo on your corporate clothing.
For silk screening the costs are calculated by how many colours you need to print. New screens are made for every colour. If you have a colour printer at your office, you may be tempted to think that your t-shirt or other corporate clothing will come out nice and quickly like it does on your printer.
For silk-screening of corporate clothing, the silk screener will put up the first screen with the first colour and then print that colour. Then he or she will remove the screen, set up a new screen and then print the second colour. So the more colours you have the more times this has to be repeated. That is why you pay per colour of your t-shirt or other corporate clothing.
4. Getting Artwork Approvals
A good quality high resolution logo will produce the best quality branding on your
corporate clothing. You can think of it as the foundation of your branding on your corporate clothing.
Once you have sent through your artwork, then the branding department will produce a layout approval. This will show where the logo will be positioned on the item and will also indicate what the pantone colours are.
If you have not supplied your pantone colours, then the branding department will do an estimate of what the colour should be. The responsibility always lies with the client to make sure that the colour is correct. Once you have signed the approval, you are accepting it the way that it is and you cannot have it changed once the job is underway. The layout approval is like a branding contract that you enter into.
Some clients prefer to have a pre-production sample. This is a matter of personal preference. Thousands of logos are embroidered or silk screened every day without a pre-production sample. But if this is your first time using a supplier or if you have a manger who micro manages, or if you have very strict corporate identity rules then you will get a lot of reassurance getting a pre-production sample.
Many companies will charge you a separate set up fee for this service, as they have to set up the machines for only one item.
Even a small company can get the benefits of having corporate clothing. Going through these simple branding tools can help you to get the best results for your corporate clothing branding budget.
For more information about corporate clothing contact Belle Regalo on info@belleregalo.co.za or 0829487461 or visit our site www.belleregalo.co.za
