Since the early stages of the economic downturn and a couple of months spent in the doldrums on my part, I began to face the current problems head on, in the latter part of 2008. Here at Andrew Parrini Corporate Clothing, after an enthusiastic start back to work after the festive period, i am glad to announce our best January sales since 2002 when we started keeping electronic accounts. A lot of this can be attributed to the work done in late 2008 to get us moving again after a period of uncertainty.

Our sales of Corporate Wear to Staffordshire County Council, Express Newspapers, St.Pauls Medical Centre, Government Offices and St.Chads Catholic High School totalled £6,000.00 and accounted for 80% of our sales. The ramaining 20% of our January turnover was made up from Workwear, Jackets, Fleeces and Printing/Embroidery, bringing the total monthly sales to £7,500.00 which is way above predictions and 50% more than any year previously. February is already looking promising and we’re currently working with new and old customers alike to ensure that we continue to buck the trend of the negative press and the gloomy outlook that so many of us are led to believe.

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We’re led to believe that style is the true constant and it’s fashions that change, but style must update itself now and again.

The Corporate BusinessWear market has to divide it’s collections between keeping a certain amount of ‘classic styles’ that will never go out of fashion as well as offering something fashionable that will have appeal to a more modern customer who’s looking for a collection that gives them the edge.

The recent trends in Corporate Wear are for a shorter, less formal suit jackets, accross the range meaning that style is surely updating itself.

Companies such as Brook Taverner who supply a range of Europe’s most successful Corporate Workwear and Staff Uniforms have recently announced poor sales of long-line jackets accross the board, showing that it’s not only the Corporate Fashion Collection, but the Sophisticated and Easycare collections that need updating to cater for the increasing demand for shorter, more ’stylish’ jackets.

Sales of Waistcoats are also showing a comeback with new offerings for Gents and Ladies in the Sophisticated Collection.

For more information on Corporate Clothing, visit Andrew Parrini Corporate Clothing.
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We’re living through a time of reality television, making transparent the nature of modern life.  A recent programme, Channel 4’s “The Devil Wears Primark”:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2008/jun/02/channel4.television , promised to give us an insight into the working conditions for indian workers who manufacture clothes for our budget ‘wear it, throw it’ shops, by setting up a sweatshop in the west end of London.  This choice of programme follows a new style of reality TV where we’re hopefully moving on from camera-on-the-wall, Big Brother style TV to one where we TV’s new ‘expose’ powers used to better understand the sweatshop ragtrade and how we all in some way support it.

At the last minute, the programme was pulled from the weekend schedule for reasons unclear, but a lot more attention is now on garment manufacturers to think about thier ‘green’ and ‘fair trade’ crudentials.

The corporate/workwear clothing market is no better in reality.  As margins are being pushed further and squeezed harder, the demand for an ever cheaper white T-shirt in the promotional, use-once range increases.

The alternative in an organic sense to a cheap white ‘doesn’t matter about the quality’ T shirt is 5 times the price.  This does get you ‘Climate Neutral’, ‘Earth Positive’, organic cotton T-shirt that’s made to high ethical standards:

http://brochure.io8.co.uk/cidttu4mys1gh/frames/cidttu4mys1gh/index.html and approved by the Fair Wear Foundation http://en.fairwear.nl/ 

They’re fantastic to wear and you really feel as though you’re making a small difference just by wearing one.

It’s true that for shorter runs, these obviously much higher quality T-shirts are an option, but where the margins can be tight, they can unfortunately be priced out of the market.

As a company that already has a green policy to recycle waste and reduce our impact on the environment as much as possible, we now offer an organic garment, where possible as an alternative but at a much lower margin of profitability.

For more details, please visit
http://www.andrew-parrini.com/organic_clothing.htm