One of the problems with smart business suits is that you tend to have to stop wearing them long before they are worn out. There’s nothing worse than somebody wearing the same suit week in and week out for years, or seeing the same shirt being washed and worn for months on end.  But what can you do with discarded clothing that still has months of good life in it?

In the USA, college students are being given the chance to ‘inherit’ smart clothing to wear to interviews. In 2009, a Kentucky college received more than 700 donated items from the community and outfitted more than 100 students. The so called Career Closet provides clothing from smart-casual polo-shirts and chinos for work placement interviews and career fairs through to fully formal skirt suits and laundered shirts for graduate level academic interviews.

The Closet also helps past graduates build a business clothing wardrobe for their first job, so that they don’t have the extra expense of buying new clothing as well as moving back home and job searching.

The claim being made in the USA is that many students show up for interviews looking unprofessional, because they either can’t afford dress clothes or don’t know how to look the part. This can be especially true of students who come from a family or culture where business clothing is not familiar.

In the USA, the students who take clothes are given the choice of leaving donations and that money is then passed to a shelter for the homeless. Many do leave money in return for their new wardrobe and others volunteer to help sort and organise the clothing that is donated.

In the UK, many colleges are trying to find ways to help their graduates through the lean years after graduation – perhaps your company could contact a local centre of further education and see if they would be interested in holding a ‘Business Wardrobe’ to which your staff can donate their worn, but still wearable, clothing?

The staff of a DHL depot have received an award after adopting an army platoon that was serving in Afghanistan.

The depot staff raised funds through a range of events and workplace competitions which was then used to purchase MP4 players and iPods, magazines, sweets, biscuits and other dry foods and even wholesale casual clothing to help make the lives of the soldiers a little more comfortable.

In 2009, they raised over £20,000 for a variety of causes including the Ava platoon, demonstrating how workplace initiatives can really help, not only by raising funds but by boosting morale and creating relationships that sustain people coping with extreme hardship.

The depot has been granted the Royal British Legion’s Friends of The Forces corporate award for its “extraordinary” work with the soldiers and DHL Droitwich’s Community Liaison Officer said, ‘At the end of the day, you may think you’re having a bad day at the office but it doesn’t compare when it’s hot, you’re getting shot at, blown up and you’ve got sand in every crevice of your body … If all firms could do what we did it would do a lot of good.’

Workplace charity initiatives range from supporting local playgroups by donating leftover paint and paper for creative play through to massive fundraising campaigns by national organisations to fund hospital units or mentoring opportunities offered to individuals ranging from potential athletes to disabled young people to ex-offenders or those recovering from serious illnesses.

In the past week or so, literally thousands of fake football shirts have been pouring into England, but they haven’t been reaching their purchasers.

Counterfeiting experts and representatives of the major clothing companies are working with the staff of the international mail sorting office in Coventry to intercept fake replica shirts and T-shirts that have been manufactured in China, Thailand and Malaysia and sold online. It’s a multi-billion pound illegal trade that doesn’t just leave fans out of pocket: it’s been linked to drug trafficking and child labour.

Faked national and Premier League football shirts, cost anything from £9 to £30 from online counterfeiters while the genuine article, this year, costs between £35 and £58.  In 2009, over 50,000 counterfeit replica shirts, worth over £1 million, were seized in the UK, leaving a lot of disappointed customers and with the World Cup starting this week, that figure is expected to double in 2010.

What to look out for

•    Check that logos are real – even online you can often spot that a logo has been reversed, or isn’t entirely accurate.
•    Check that the website you’re visiting is legitimate – where possible, buy from retailers and services you know already or have been personally recommended to you.
•    Make sure you know the trader’s full address – especially if the company is based outside the UK. Don’t assume an internet company is based in the UK just because its web address has ‘uk’ in it – check out the physical address and phone number.
•    If the item or service is over £100 then consider paying by credit card this gives you some protection in the case of non-delivery or seizure by customs etc.
•    Look for websites that have a secure payment system (known as an encryption facility) – usually shown as a padlock image onscreen when you reach the payment stage.

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.

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.

A number of stars have removed their clothing for charity. The calendar features a range of people we usually see with their clothes on, from Apprentice contestant Kate Walsh to former Strictly Come Dancing contestant Camilla Dallerup and athletes like Sol Campbell and Jimmie Anderson. Even veteran actor Christopher Biggins has stripped for the Cancer Research UK campaign which is called Give Up Clothes For Good and is designed to encourage the public to empty their wardrobes to raise funds for cancer research.

On the other hand, giving clothing to charity isn’t without risk. Robbers are raiding clothing banks and stealing donations meant for the poor in Wiltshire. The Salvation Army clothing banks have been broken into several times in the past month and large amounts of casual clothing have been stolen.

Many companies are also getting into the corporate clothing giving scheme – whether it’s putting a clothing bank in the car park to encourage staff to donate their old clothing or investing in simple uniform items such as wholesale T-shirts and then asking staff to gift aid to a charity the money they’d otherwise have spent on clothing for work.

The Crisis charity’s 2008 Reverse Graffiti campaign has become one of the benchmarks for city-based charities.

•    The aim – Crisis wanted to highlight the fact that although where were now fewer people now living on the streets of major British cities, sizeable hidden homeless population of thousands were leading ‘invisible lives’ in hostels and temporary accommodation that didn’t address their needs to a stable home, training and a chance to find permanent employment.
•   The process – rather than using paint or spray cans, water was used through a sprayer to clear dirt from city walls through a stencil in the shape of a homeless person in shapeless clothing huddled against a wall. The shape was actually made up of the words ‘most homeless people have moved on but their problems haven’t gone away’ and included the charity’s website address. 15 teams dressed in Crisis branded clothing worked through a single night across London to create ‘reverse’ graffiti that was seen by thousands of commuters on their way to work the next morning. Because the graffiti is actually clean wall, rather than dirty, it’s not classed as vandalism or damage to property.
•    The outcome – the campaign, which Crisis featured on its Facebook page, resulted in 50 PR follow-ups, more than 120,000 visits to the Crisis website and 60 new regular donors being recruited.

International charity Oxfam has partnered with magazine producer IPC Media. The charity is giving away copies of the music magazine NME in their shops in return for donations. The slogan is swap ‘old music for new music’ and encourages the public to bring in unwanted items from their music collection (records, cassettes and CDs) and take away a free copy of the re-launched magazine in return. It’s the first time a national monthly UK publication has been given away free for charity but the charity did previously work with The Arctic Monkeys, selling the group’s singles in-store.  

And in Sheffield, a charity football match in honour of soldiers killed in Afghanistan has received a donation of sports clothing.

Local company Pyramid Carpets has donated the football strip for the players who are current and former members of Third Battalion The Yorkshire Regiment to wear. The red and blue strip has the logo of the armed forces charity Help for Heroes over that of the carpet store. The match aims to raise funds for injured soldiers from Britain’s current conflicts.