Four reasons to invest in business branded clothing

Business branded clothing can mean anything from baseball caps to full uniforms, both formal and informal. There are all kinds of excellent reasons for businesses to invest in it.

Here, Ross Crayton, Managing Director at Core Workwear, shares his insight for why every business should invest in branded clothing.

Better external branding

Understandably, the most obvious reason for investing in business branded clothing is to promote your brand. When you own a business, literally, every asset you own is a way to improve your brand recognition. In the case of business branded clothing, it’s also a way to ensure consistency amongst team members and to give your staff a professional appearance.

In the modern world, business branded clothing also helps your visibility on social media. Remember, your presence on social media will usually extend far beyond your own social media marketing campaigns.

Any picture any customer posts on social media is potential marketing collateral for you. The most valuable marketing collateral has your brand on it. The simplest way to make this happen is to make sure that all your employees are wearing business branded clothing. At a minimum, ensure that your customer-facing employees have business-branded clothing.

Enhanced internal branding

There are two reasons why internal branding matters. Firstly, it generally has an impact on staff morale and hence recruitment, retention and productivity. Secondly, internal branding often filters through into external branding.

In simple terms, a lot of your marketing is going to come via your employees and ex-employees. You need them to be positive about your business. They should be encouraging their friends to work there and/or go there as customers. Employees and ex-employees speaking negatively about their (former) employer can lead to serious backlash.

Business branded clothing helps to promote a sense of identity within the company. It can help new employees and temporary staff to integrate. On a more practical level, it relieves employees of the need to buy clothes just for work and figure out what to wear every day.

Improved security, health & safety

At a basic level, business branded clothing is a simple way to differentiate employees from third parties. It doesn’t actually matter who the third parties are. The key point is that most, if not all, businesses have internal areas. Typically non-employees only enter these for special reasons and generally under supervision.

Some businesses have areas that are only accessible to certain employees. Even those which don’t often divide business areas according to working groups. Using business branded clothing provides businesses with an easy way to differentiate working groups.

If necessary this can be taken a step further with clothing used to differentiate key employees. This could mean anything from identifying a first aider or fire marshal to being able to tell quickly and easily who’s where in the chain of command.

Providing business branded clothing also means that businesses can ensure that employees’ clothing is suitable for the situation. This can help to promote health and safety. For example, having employees wear branded peaked caps can help to protect them from heat and light. It can also help to reduce the amount of hair shed in the workplace.

Business branded clothing can also help employees with making the mental transition between “me time” and “work time”. When they put on their work clothing, they get into the work zone. Just as importantly, when they take it off again, they leave work behind and get on with their personal lives.

Increased efficiency & productivity

Giving your employees branded workwear ensures that they are comfortable at their jobs. This allows them to focus on the actual task at hand instead of being distracted by their discomfort. It also helps to make them more easily identifiable to customers needing help. This is becoming increasingly important as modern customers place a huge value on their time.