If you have fashion mad tween and teenagers, several new video games offer a chance to get your young fashionistas to understand budgets and time-keeping as well as reinforcing their love of clothing.

One such game, produced by Nintendo, is called Style Savvy and it’s a combination of shopping and style.  The player starts as a salesperson in a posh boutique, and has to work out how to please customers by listening to their interests and preferences and putting together outfits that will suit them.  If you get it right you get more points, and end up managing your own boutique, where you chose which wholesale clothing you will stock by visiting the showrooms of different designers and brands.

Now you also have to buy inventory with your sales income, decide when to advertise and where, which clothing items to put on sale, what to display in your shop windows etc. So you can choose to become a specialist in grunge clothing – selling punk rock items and classic T-shirts or instead run a store that focuses on business clothing like shirts and jackets or high fashion for evenings out.  But while all the fun is taking place, young people also have to master the basic skills of business life – if they don’t sell clothing they can’t buy more so if they upset the customers by offering them inappropriate clothing or by being sarcastic, they don’t make a sale. They even have to make time to go to the hairdresser and gym so that they are a good advertisement for their shop – if they fail to be well groomed, they also lose points.

Also on the Nintendo DS platform Fashion Designer, where the player puts together fashion shoots or there’s a Project Runway video game due to launch on March 2, for the Nintendo Wii, but at the moment, Style Savvy is the game that parents are happy to see their teenage girls playing, because it’s building the skills that all young people need to succeed in the grown up world.

Vivienne Westwood has designed a Fashion for Relief/ Haiti T-shirt, which was worn by Naomi Campbell at a fashion show for the White Ribbon Alliance – the funds from the T-shirt sales will help women, especially those with children and babies, left destitute by the earthquake.  Apparently the Fashion for Relief/ Haiti catwalk show has been invited to travel to Moscow and Dubai to further its funding.

9-0 to Cheryl. A cheeky manufacturer who has put out two T-shirts, one for each side of the Cole marriage, says Cheryl is outselling Ashley nine to one. The female T-shirt says Team Cheryl – Don’t fight for his love, in honour of her best-selling single and the mens short-sleeved teeshirt reads Team Cheryl – I’ll fight for your love. As bookmakers have already paid out on bets that the couple’s marriage has ended, the fight may already be over.

NFL 0 – 1 New Orleans. The National Football League in the USA was trying to stop New Orleans T-shirt sellers from using the famous New Orleans Saints slogan ‘Who Dat?’ on T-shirts, because, it said, the use of the slogan, alongside the NFL crest, implied that the NFL was endorsing the T-shirts and that right to be endorsed went only to licensed vendors. Who dat say dey gon’ beat dem Saints? – is the local battle cry for the Saints and public outcry over the rights of New Orleans to use a slogan that’s been yelled for many years across the hurricane devastated city led to the NFL backing down. The Saints won the finals too!

When the weather’s terrible and the children are at home, whether on holiday from school or because they’re not well, it can be a constant hassle to keep them amused. Here are ten top tips to keep them happy without having to spend too much and without straining your temper.

1.    Sock puppet theatre.  Take some old socks and sew or stick decorations o them to make characters. Then cut a hole in a cardboard box and put on a show using your puppets.
2.    Dig out all your old clothes and put them in four bags or boxes: tops, bottoms, shoes and accessories. Each person has to take one item from each box, put them on and do stride along the catwalk! You can use a digital camera or video camera to film this activity. You’ll be amazed just how creative kids can get with a few vintage T-shirts and belts, old hats and accessory items like gloves, briefcases, umbrellas and plastic flowers.
3.    Telling stories – this is a great activity for imaginative kids. Get them to write a series of random words on pieces of paper, then fold them up and put them in a hat. Start telling a story and just when you get to a really exciting moment, stop. The next person has to pull one of the words out of the hat and tell the next instalment of the story, including that word in their tale. Limit the time to three minutes for over tens, two minutes for under tens. This is a great activity for children who are ill as it keeps them involved without requiring movement
4.    Scavenger Hunts are fun for inside or outside – simply list five or ten items that your children must find and set them off on their hunt.
5.    Camping out indoors. Make a tent with sheets and chairs and cook some campfire food such as hot chocolate, baked beans etc. Draw the curtains and use torches as if it was night time. You can tell ghost stories or do a scavenger hunt in the ‘dark’ too.  
6.    Old cardboard boxes and thick paint are great for creating big bold murals – pop your kids into old shirts to protect their clothes from the paint.
7.    If you’ve planned ahead you get have a tie-dying morning, decorating anything from T-shirts to hair scrunchies or even bedding. Tie-dying kits are relatively cheap and a lot of fun and you can add to the fun with fabric paints for textiles
8.    Film nights – choose a god family friendly film, make popcorn and drinks, turn off the lights and watch your movie – every twenty minutes or so, stop the film and let the kids act out ‘adverts’ that they’ve seen at the cinema – you’ll be amazed at their creativity.
9.    Again, if you’ve planned ahead, you can give each child a disposable camera and set them a subject such as ‘things that shine’ or ‘hidden monsters in our house’ and get them to plan and take pictures that you can then get printed and put in a special album
10.    Self portrait – using a large piece of paper such as old wallpaper, or a big sheet of cardboard from a domestic appliance box, let your child lay down on the paper as you draw round them. Then can then colour in their self portrait or you can cut around it and they can pin their favourite clothes onto it once they’ve coloured in their face and hair.

T-shirts are a social indicator. They help sociologists judge what most concerns the general public and which issues are so widespread that they can be put on a T-shirt because they are universal enough for everybody to understand the message they convey.  In the past 12 months, the economic crisis, aging and the environment have been key subjects that have featured on the fronts of the T-shirt wearing section of society. Here are ten that have proved most newsworthy:

1.    Statistics mean never having to say you’re certain – This one’s always a popular favourite, but with bank crashes and climate-change-gate, it’s proving to be both amusing and highly topical
2.    Don’t mention the war – made famous by John Cleese, this top is turning up all over the place, particularly in regimental towns where you can pick which war not to mention and where it’s often seen on the front of a hoodie
3.    Retired = I was tired yesterday and I’m tired again today – suddenly very popular, who knows why?
4.   The government gave billions of our money to the banks but I still had to pay for this lousy T-shirt – another bank-based garment, riffing on the ‘lousy T-shirt’ theme
5.    I married Mr Right, but I didn’t know his first name was Always – this one’s selling especially well in the USA
6.    I have the body of a God. Unfortunately the god is Buddha – seen around February, worn by on those who broke their New Year’s Resolution to go to the gym
7.    I know I came into this room for a reason – another T-shirt that proved popular with the older generation recently, possibly because they are the first generation to have worn slogan-printed T-shirts and have now reached the age where they can’t remember why!
8.    This T-shirt was tested on animals. It didn’t fit – funny update on the animal cruelty debate
9.    Buckle up. It makes it harder for the aliens to snatch you from your car – this one’s another American fave, but it burst into the UK market at the end of 2009 and has been seen widely around university campuses.
10.    I used to be schizophrenic, but now we’re just fine – a perennial top pick, always worn, for some reason, by men.

If you’re not sure what makes a business social, or why, then you could do a lot worse than look at Threadless, the Chicago-based T-shirt company.

Ten years ago its founders decided that staff and customers weren’t necessary distinct and separated groups. So it set up an internet site and asked its customers to submit their own T-shirts for sale. And not just customers – anybody can put up a T-shirt for consumer consideration. Today, up to 300 designs a day are posted and the ‘community’ votes on its favourites.  The winners get $2,000 and Threadless then picks out the best of the top-voted clothing designs to print. In addition to printing, it provides services for the designers such as ensuring that their T-shirts aren’t stolen by other people, and the identical service is provided for buyers: Threadless checks that the shirts it plans to print are not copyright violations of other designs already on the market. They’ve turned wholesale clothing into a bespoke business.

Threadless success

It now employs around fifty people, many of whom are focused outwards on the community that it has build on the web, on Twitter (1.5 million followers) and on Facebook (around 100,000 ‘fans’) and on engaging with them, not just selling to them.

Community Engagement

The business works because it’s not predicated on ‘random strangers’ buying the clothing Threadless creates. The customer base is close-knit and engaged with each other, as well as with the company: buyers and designers can talk to each other on the Threadless forum, comment on designs on display, be rude about the music that is playing in the Threadless offices (which is tweeted pretty well hourly) or just gossip about things that are nothing to do with the ‘business’. It’s not known if there have been any Threadless weddings yet, between people who’ve met through the company’s virtual community, but sales resulting from their Twitter stream are in six figures, so they are clearly getting lots of conversion from their socially adept marketing.

Future planning based on feedback

They also use their community to shape their future – at present Threadless is talking to its customers and designers (who are often one and the same) about where they would be willing to see Threadless products being sold retail, rather than online. And they’ve moved into new areas of merchandise based on what they’ve learned from their interactions – they are one of the world’s biggest vendors of iPhone cases, because iPhones are one of the most popular accessories in their customer base.

Just as containerloads of overstock clothing and donated garments are making their way to Haiti to aid the victims of the earthquake there, British people are also benefitting from free clothes, but they aren’t exactly donations.

Trading standards officers in East Yorkshire have found a novel way of disposing of counterfeit clothing that they’ve seized in raids on shops and fake auctions. Warehouses full of knock-off T-shirts, belts and trainers are being stripped of their fake logos by a local charity and then given to the homeless.

A spokesman for the trading standards organisation said, ‘Disposing of counterfeit goods, seized by trading standards officers during their normal day-to-day operations, has always been difficult … Many of the items seized are of good quality but frequently end up in landfill as brand owners were unwilling to let counterfeit goods be reused, even to benefit charities … The cost of sending these items to landfill in the past has been substantial and meant that was less money was available to spend on frontline trading standards work’

It’s a great step forward when the proceeds of criminal activity can be used to help less fortunate members of society, but that’s not the only way that excess or waste clothing can benefit good causes. Many charities from Emmaus through to the YMCA and charities helping rough sleepers like the Salvation Army are happy to receive bulk donations of clothing. Particularly popular are coveralls that can be worn when clearing areas used by homeless people,  waterproof jackets which are stockpiled and then handed out in bad weather and clothing that can be provided to refugees who often arrive without suitable winter sweatshirts or jumpers for the British climate.

Many businesses have wholesale clothing stocks left over at the end of a promotion or when uniform patterns change, and these can be donated to help needy people just contact the local council and large local charities to discuss what needs they have and how garments can be used.

The ‘team-building day’ has had both good and bad press recently. The good news has been from psychologists who have discovered that business team building has benefits beyond the business in improving self-esteem and positive thoughts in the individuals who take part both at work and at home. The bad press has centred on the way that many team building events simply set up ‘competition mania’ which divides organisations along team lines and leaves a set of artificial but damaging ‘us and them’ behaviours that can actually damage relationships and harm the workplace and the bottom line, of any business.

This happens because events that pit one group against another are easy to energise – almost everybody has a primal urge to do better than ‘the competition’ which means that it’s a natural way to motivate a large group of people to get behind a series of activities that they might otherwise refuse to invest in.  But in the long term, this has three major downsides:

1.    One group wins – but everybody else loses, and this can lead to demotivation, or the desire to move from the ‘losing’ side to the winning one within the company and that means that some teams in a business are no longer as well-resourced as the ‘winning’ one.

2.    Competition replaces performance – because we strive to do our utmost when we compete, we often get narrow minded. This can mean that a team that ‘wins’ a team building event year after year is spending a lot of the year simply preparing for the team building event, not working in harmony with the rest of the company!

3.    Team building becomes its own purpose – companies that get too addicted to using team building events can actually forget that they are supposed to be taking lessons from the events back into the workplace.

A good team building event should be cost-effective, empowering, supportive and deliver specific learning that is valuable to the business.

This means that the best team building events are likely to be based on one of three key themes:

•    Treasure hunts – these team building activities send teams out to solve clues that lead to a treasure. To make a treasure hunt truly positive, make sure the teams are not in competition – instead ensure they all need to solve their clues to find part of the answer that leads to the whole which rewards all the teams, not just one.
•    Clue based mysteries – these work best if you can relate them to some area of your business, a good events company can be invaluable here in providing actors and props to make a mystery work. So if you’re a food company, rather than having a murder, have a ‘secret recipe’ that’s gone missing and get teams to recreate it using clues and equipment around a country house. If you’re a sports group, why not organise an event where the next Andy Murray, Serena Williams or Ronaldo has been spotted playing in the locality and your talent scouts have to find him or her and sign them up. Get your event organiser to have several ‘stars’ or ‘recipes’ to be found, give your teams colour-coded stylish sweathsirts to add an element of competition without overdoing it, and try to ensure that at some point the teams have to cooperate (by exchanging information for example) if they are all to achieve their aim.
•    Film or music making – these are the biggest growth areas on team building for good reason: they fulfil all the needs of a truly creative event: they generate a huge positive vibe, call on everybody’s creativity, allow people to find their niche in a team, in areas such as costume design (creating themed T-shirts etc) choreography, make-up (not just for women!) and writing, directing and prompting, and give a wonderful finished product.