Five things businesses get wrong when ordering staff uniform

Kitting out a team looks simple. Pick a polo, send your logo, wait for a box to arrive. Then the box turns up, half of it doesn’t fit, the logo isn’t quite right, and the whole thing has cost more in hassle than it saved in price.

After more than a decade supplying and branding workwear for businesses across Yorkshire, I see the same handful of mistakes over and over. None of them are obvious if you’ve never ordered uniform before — and all of them are avoidable.

1. Ordering off a size chart

This is the big one. Sizing varies enormously between brands: a large in one range is a medium in another, and the fit differs again between men’s and women’s cuts. Order for twenty people off a chart and you can reasonably expect a handful of returns and a few staff quietly not wearing their kit because it doesn’t fit properly.

The fix costs nothing. Get the actual garments in front of your team before you commit. Ten minutes trying things on prevents a far more expensive problem later.

2. Buying on price alone

The cheapest polo is rarely the cheapest polo. A budget garment that goes shapeless after fifteen washes gets replaced twice as often as one that holds up — and it makes your team look tired while it does it.

That doesn’t mean buying premium for everything. It means matching the garment to the job. Front-of-house staff seen by customers all day need something different from a warehouse team. Value ranges are genuinely good for some roles; for others, they’re a false economy.

3. Sending a logo that can’t be used

Artwork causes more delay than anything else. A logo pulled off a website or lifted from a business card usually can’t be reproduced cleanly — embroidery in particular needs a proper file to work from, because your logo has to be converted stitch by stitch.

Find your original vector file before you start. If nobody can find it — which happens more often than you’d think — it can be redrawn, but it’s better to know that at the beginning than three days in.

4. Ignoring the standards for your sector

Some uniform is just uniform. Some of it is compliance, and getting it wrong has consequences.

Hi-vis is the clearest example: EN ISO 20471 sets three classes depending on how close your team works to traffic, and specifying the wrong one leaves you non-compliant. There’s a subtler version of the same problem, too — put a logo in the wrong place on a hi-vis garment and you can compromise the certification you paid for.

Kitchens have their own requirements around clean, suitable protective clothing. Care settings have infection-control rules that dictate short sleeves and bare forearms. If your sector has rules, they should shape the order rather than be discovered afterwards.

5. Choosing the wrong branding method

Embroidery and print aren’t interchangeable. Embroidery is stitched into the fabric — durable, smart, and the right answer for polos, fleeces and jackets that get worn and washed constantly. Print handles what embroidery can’t: large designs, full colour, detailed artwork, big back prints.

Most businesses need both at some point. The difference between them is worth understanding before you order, not after.

The common thread

Every one of these comes from ordering blind — off a screen, off a chart, off a price list. The businesses that get it right are the ones who see and handle the garments first.

That’s why we keep a showroom in Bradford with samples from more than 30 brands, and why we’re happy for teams to come in and get properly sized up before committing to anything.

Free team sizing day for Chamber members

We’d like to offer this to fellow members free of charge. Bring your team to our Bradford showroom and we’ll size everyone in person, across the full range, with no obligation and no order required on the day. Just mention you’re a Chamber member when you book.

Call 01274 491410 or email hello@brapparel.co.uk.