It’s a standard solution, using garment embroidery for workwear, and it’s often an equally standard result when it arrives from an online supplier – ‘I hate my corporate workwear.’ But other than a badly embroidered polo shirt or sweatshirt, twinned with a baseball cap that makes me look like a mad chef who’s just had a fight with a customer, what are my options? I’ve been online, and typed in something sensible, like garment embroidery for workwear, that should do the trick. Hello, there’s an enormous offering available, where everything looks pretty much the same; and the options to decorate the garments all seem pretty standard (you can have a print, or an embroidery) and everyone is saying ‘look at our awesome baseball caps.’ But I’m worried that awesome could be a misspelling of awful, and until the box arrives I’m not going to find out. What am I going to do?

Think like a clothing brand.

Just because your workwear garment is for staff to wear in a restaurant, or a nice embroidery for Barry to model while he’s out in the van, doesn’t mean you can’t think like a clothing brand. But it will mean having a proper conversation with your supplier, rather than filling in an online form and praying that God remotely cares about your workwear. Pick up the phone, and start with the reference point of an established brand. If you love Superdry (and we do offer counselling for that – 0115 9585000), but if you do love Superdry, there’s nothing wrong with you calling your supplier and saying I want my embroidered polo shirt or sweatshirt to look as close to one of theirs please. If your workwear supplier doesn’t engage with you in a good old chat about embroidery, and try and offer you a nice heavyweight carbon sueded garment with ribbed side panels, a straight body and tailored sleeve, or a polo shirt with a little velvet taping in the back neck…wrong workwear supplier.

Garment embroidery for brands.

We’ve already had that, but another part of thinking like a clothing brand is range planning. That’s a bit over the top for five blokes with a sponge and a hosepipe isn’t it? Not really. They’re going to need a range of workwear garments, a polo shirt, maybe a sweatshirt, and while they’re washing someone’s Bentley and flashing off your corporate embroidery, they’ll be needing a nice water repellent piece of outerwear. Why shouldn’t they look like all those garments fit together as part of a workwear collection, rather than looking like they’ve just knocked off a charity shop? And high viz vests and cheapo bobbly bobble hats, come on, there’s got to be something more stylish for embroidery to sit on, and there is.

Get a garment sample.

A lot of suppliers charge for a sample workwear garment these days, fair enough, they send out thousands, but for the sake of a tenner or so, get a sample. Or if you’re really serious, get a full garment size set, and then they’re won’t be any grumbling from Big Dave on the loading bay or Little Pete in finance, who will have tried before you buy. Better still, go and see your supplier and have a look at the whole range – having called them first to make sure they stock a cool garment range, and you won’t get there to find all they sell is polo shirts from El Shito, fresh in and still steaming from somewhere up the Dung Dung River.

Don’t chisel over a quid extra.

Well we would say that wouldn’t we, but believe it or not, we don’t make any more or less money by using nicer workwear garments and charging a quid extra. The margins are the same, we pay more for it, you pay more for it, it’s not top level economics. Will the gear last longer? Yes. And like a lot of people we’d say either make it right if your embroidery carrier, or don’t do it at all. We’d genuinely rather you just tell them to rock up in their own clothes, which will always be a damn sight nicer than some dodgy online workwear garment.

Share your vision.

Most importantly perhaps, don’t be too embarrassed to chat to your supplier and share your vision. If your bar or restaurant is all about old school values, and you want your clothing to reflect a sense of an England where a lady could expect a bus seat to be given up for her, then feel free to say so. You may prefer your clothing to have an extra whiff of gentleman. Ask for it, it can be done.

When choosing garment embroidery for workwear, and if you want to avoid a badly embroidered polo shirt or sweatshirt, pick up the phone and tell your story, and imagine you’re a big clothing brand, because there are those out there who will listen.