During its heyday, punk clothing was seen as disposable and anti-fashion, but this week a T-shirt worn by Sid Vicious of The Sex Pistols, is to be auctioned, with an expected price of £10,000. The bass player was filmed wearing the T-shirt during the ‘documentary’ about the band entitled The Great Rock ‘n’ Roll Swindle. It was designed by Malcolm McLaren, who was the group’s manager at the time, and bore a swastika. It features in some of the last photographs taken of Vicious before his death the following year – he succumbed to a heroin overdose at a party thrown to celebrate his release on bail in New York in 1978. He had been charged with murdering his girlfriend Nancy Spungen who was discovered stabbed to death in the bathroom of their hotel room. He then attempted suicide, assaulted a fellow musician, was arrested and bailed again before dying after he was released the second time.

Punk fashion became synonymous with buying clothing in bulk and personalising garments – often creating clothing that could not be reworn because it could not be washed or was too torn or damaged for sustainable use.

The dealer who is offering the garment on behalf of an anonymous seller says that the piece of clothing ‘sums up everything that punk and the Sex Pistols stood for: rebellion, controversy and provocation’, which may be true, but it’s definitely an unexpected twist in the history of punk rock to find that one thing that sums up the Sex Pistols is ‘good investment’!

Buying clothing online is a great way to save money, particularly if you can buy in bulk, for a sports group or children’s club, but it can also be a little daunting at first. Here’s how to make the best decision and buy the best bargain:

Buying for yourself

•    Before you begin to browse, get a good friend to help you take your own measurements – you need to know your chest, waist, hips, arm length and inside leg (which is the length from your crotch to the hem of your trousers) in both inches and centimetres. If you’re a bit shy about your inside leg – find a pair of trousers that are exactly the right length and comfortable in the fit, and measure them!

•    When you’ve got your measurements, browse the various styles and sizes offered online, because different manufacturers offer different cuts and styles and working out which suits you best can ensure your clothing looks great.

•    When you’ve found an item that suits you, why not order several different colours at the same time to avoid paying extra postage? If you get free shipping when you spend a certain amount this can essentially mean getting ‘free’ clothing instead of paying for postage.

Buying in bulk

•    Ensure you purchase from sites that give loads of pictures, and detailed information about size, fit and colour. The more you know about the clothing, the better informed your choice will be.

•    It’s a good idea, when placing a bulk order, to contact the retailer by email or phone explaining what you require and what your current first choice from their offering would be. Sometimes the retailer can offer you a better deal or simply point you to a garment that you had overlooked or disregarded – because they deal with so many people, online retailers have a vast experience of wholesale clothing purchases, how they are used and what works best for the buyer.

•    Make sure you know how the return policy of the retailer works – if you’re buying for a group you’re taking responsibility for ensuring that if you need to send stuff back, you aren’t going to incur a fortune’s worth of costs.

•    Check the privacy policy and online purchasing policy – a good online shop will have a secure system to keep your credit card details and personal information safe, and will also give you the chance to opt in, or out, of marketing information sent by them or by others.

There are thousands of businesses that aren’t on the high street and can’t afford the kind of publicity that’s necessary if you’re to compete for the attention that the big name stores and services get.

However, if you think laterally, you can find ways to boost your company profile without having to invest in costly advertising. By offering services – or fun – that just aren’t available in the big stores or through stuffier service providers, your business can build itself a niche location in the hearts and pockets of consumers.

Focus on the fact that money is tight for everybody, whether it’s an individual who’s experiencing the credit crunch or a company with a squeezed budget. Offer a service to those customers that makes them feel really valued – give each person who spends over a certain amount a free foot massage. Just hire a Beauty Therapy student from the local college to give the massages and put them in a T-shirt advertising your store. For service businesses, this is a great way to reinforce your brand, as it offers a chance for your therapist to go to the workplace of your clients, wearing your branded clothing.

Alternatively, have an in-store service that allows kids to decorate a simple white T-shirt using fabric pens, while their parents shop. Charge a nominal amount for this or offer it free on a single weekend in the year. Again, hire somebody with suitable training in childcare to supervise the kiddies – this builds brand recognition too, at very little cost. Given the ‘pester power’ that children can indulge in, getting them to like your company may be one of the best investments you can make.

Clothing can be used to educate, inform or even raise funds:

Campaign Clothing

On Friday 26 March, people in the greater Cleveland area chose to wear a custom printed T-shirt saying “HIV Positive”. The shirt-wearing phenomenon was recorded on  Facebook as an attempt to get everybody with whom the shirt-wearers came into contact to think about what it means to have HIV or AIDS and how the rest of the world reacts. The shirts were designed to challenge the silence and shame that descends on people who are HIV Oositive or have AIDS. The AIDS taskforce director said, “We don’t stigmatize people who have prostate cancer. Why HIV?”

The campaign began with a small wholesale order of 100 T-shirts but in the end, more than 500 were purchased by individuals who want to demonstrate their support for those who are dealing with the disease. It is hoped that the campaign will spread across the globe, the cities of Chicago, Toronto, Atlanta, and Columbus have already expressed interest in running their own HIV Positive T-shirt day.

Kids in Business

In the past few weeks, children up and down the UK have been taking part in the Make Your Mark with a Tenner challenge run by Enterprise UK. Essentially they are lent £10 for a month, which they must use to make as much money as they can. The idea is to inspire young people to make a profit and make a difference to the community at the same time.

In Sheffield, four ten and eleven year olds got together to pool their ten pound stakes in a joint venture: Sonny, Emily, Bethany and Holly combined a lunch-break juice stand with an offer personalise classmates’ PE shirts. They printed names and celebrity images like Beyonce and Steven Gerrard onto the polo-shirts. It did cause them some problems, working out how to write the names backwards so that they printed forwards – and once they spilt some juice on a shirt, but overall they made a profit of £72 which they are donating to the relief effort in Haiti and the Tickled Pink breast cancer charity.

There are dozens of ways to customise casual clothing – here are four of the best!

1.    Print it – if you want a customised polo shirt or sweatshirt, you can make your own iron-on transfer or use a custom site to make a one off top with your preferred photograph or graphic on it. If you’re printing more than two or three, it’s often cheaper to buy a new T-shirt from the site and have it printed, than to customise an old one.

2.    Bleach it – if you add bleach to a coloured but otherwise plain T-shirt using a cotton bud, you can get some intricate designs. You can even mash up an existing design by adding your own bleached elements to it – this works really well for words which end up having a great graffiti feel to them.

3.    Cut it – this works best with a big old T-shirt that has extra room so that you can make the ties without it being too constricting. First lay your teeshirt flat. Cut away the seamed edge of the neckline (including the tag) and then trim down the neckline to your preference. You can keep trying it on and snipping away until you like it. Then simply slice right down of the back of the T-shirt – you can mark this with chalk before you cut to keep it very neat. Then make a shallow snip in the top two edges by the neckline and use that to tie the neckline together. Repeat this process  with the bottom ‘corners’ and then tie the T-shirt. This is great for wearing over a swimming costume or bikini.

4.    Sew it – even the most inept person can add beads to the sleeves or hem of a T-shirt or to the pocket of a cotton shirt. Remember that this kind of treatment does make it more difficult to washing your garment though.

Fund-raisers across the UK and USA have been developing new ways of getting money out of the public – via the toilet!

In the USA, Relay for Life, painted some toilets bright purple and used them to inform the public and raise funds for the American Cancer Society.  What happens is that the toilet turns up (along with its minder) outside your house or place of work. To get rid of it you have to made a $10 donation which you place in the toilet bowl and the toilet then ‘flushes’ itself out of your vicinity. If you give it a larger donation, it will relocate to an address of you choice and loiter there instead! The toilet is accompanied by a purple T-shirt wearing Relay For Life volunteer who then visits the office or knocks on the door you’ve selected and tells the recipient ‘you’ve been flushed’!

In the UK, CORD established a Toilet Twinning campaign that raises funds to build toilets in Burundi.

So far nearly 900 latrines, each for a family of six, have been built meaning that more than 5,000 individuals now have a hygienic and private toilet. The donor gets a framed certificate to hang in their own toilet, which gives the number of the latrine they twinned with, and the grid reference in Burundi so that it can be found on a map. Toilet twinning costs £60 and is proving to be a popular option with small companies that want to support a charity that is achieving practical change for the world’s poorest people.