Fashion Terms — the Apparel Search fashion terminology directory
What is corporate apparel? Corporate apparel is company brand specific clothing meant to be worn while working. This category of garments can include clothing, footwear, bags or fashion accessories that are produced for a particular business or organization for dressing employees — clothing manufactured with the company's name and logo. Corporate apparel can be considered to be a uniform for employees. This page explains the category and links to how it is made: the blank garments it starts from, the print shops and custom embroidery that apply the branding, and the wholesale corporate apparel directory.
What is corporate apparel?
Corporate apparel is company brand specific
clothing meant to be worn while working.
This category of garments can include clothing,
footwear, bags, or fashion accessories that are produced for a
particular business or organization for dressing employees.
Clothing that is produced to display the purchasing companies brand name
& or their logo.
Corporate apparel can be considered to be a uniform for employees. Typically the clothes are manufactured with the company’s name or logo (or both). When a company purchases corporate apparel, they often have three primary choices.
Clothing blanks can be purchased and used as uniforms without a company brand name or logo.
There are many full service apparel companies
offering top brand corporate apparel blanks along with printing &
embroidery services.
Corporate apparel can be used to dress employees of
a particular company but it can also be used for marketing purposes and
gifting. For example, a large company may choose to give away
t-shirts with their company logo at a trade show or exhibition. Or
they may have a special promotion or event where they pass out logo
hats, bags, or sweatshirts.
Uniforms or corporate apparel can be provided free
of charge or sold to employees. This entirely depends on the
company.
Corporate apparel is often used to promote the
logos of premier companies, golf courses, universities, resorts, and
casinos.
Custom logo embroidery and screen printing are an
important aspect of corporate and event apparel, but is not always an
absolute necessity. In summary corporate apparel is a type of
uniform that may or may not have your companies name & or logo.
From fleece to outerwear, polo shirts to tote bags,
you an rather easily find a wide selection of time-tested products
perfect to embroider with your company’s logo. State-of-the art digital
equipment and expert needle-workers are available at several companies
to help ensure your logo looks fabulous.
Utilizing various online resources you can possibly
see a preview of your uploaded or saved logo on most of the best-selling
products. Thanks to modern technology this feature is available for the
most popular placements on products such as shirts, jackets and polos to
give you an idea of how your logo will look on the selected color of the
product.
Appearances and first impressions in the corporate
world are vital. Your company deserves high-quality products to match
your business standards. You should learn more about apparel to give
your company a polished, professional appearance. Learn more about
corporate apparel distributors in our wholesale fashion
section.
It would be a good idea to also read our imagewear fashion term.
Thank you for using the Apparel Search website.
Corporate apparel does three jobs at once, and a good program is designed for all three. The first is identification: a customer in a store, a client at a site or a visitor at a conference can see at a glance who works here. The second is cohesion: a team dressed in the same colors and logo reads as one organization, to itself as much as to outsiders, which is why corporate apparel is standard issue at trade shows, sales meetings and company events even for staff who wear their own clothes at the office. The third is advertising that walks around: every logo garment is an impression in the world, and because the wearer chose or was given the garment, it reaches places paid media does not.
The practical decisions follow from those jobs. Garment choice starts from blanks — the undecorated t-shirts, polos, fleece and caps of the wholesale trade — chosen for how they take decoration, how they wash (corporate apparel is washed hard and often), and whether the same style can be reordered next year so the team still matches. Decoration choice is the print-versus-embroidery decision this page's links lead to: printing covers large, colorful designs cheaply, while embroidery reads as more durable and more premium on chest logos. Companies that plan for reorders, size ranges and new-starter packs get a program; companies that order once get a box of shirts in odd sizes.
Clothing produced for a particular business or organization, carrying the company's name or logo, for its employees to wear while working — in effect, a branded uniform, which can extend to footwear, bags and accessories.
Usually by decorating blank garments: a blank t-shirt, polo or jacket is printed or embroidered with the company's branding. This page links to the blanks term, print shops and custom embroidery — the three steps of the standard route.
A uniform is specified for function and consistency in a job; corporate apparel is specified for brand display. The two overlap — much corporate apparel functions as a uniform — but a logo polo worn at a trade show is corporate apparel without being anyone's uniform. The related imagewear term is linked from here.