Less formal than a shirt and easier for staff to care for (less ironing), Embroidered Polo Shirts are ideal for Staff Uniform. Polo Shirts embroidered with your company logo are a great way to help promote your business, unify your staff and present a professional image to your clients but how do you ensure you get it right?公司制服

Embroidered Polo Shirts are available in different fabrics, styles and colours. First of all, you need to choose the right fabric for your Polo Shirts, one that suits the working environment.

All in the Fibre

Traditionally, Polo Shirts have been manufactured from 100% Cotton, a natural fibre that has been used by mankind for thousands of years. Cotton is kind to the skin and absorbs moisture, so it can help keep the wearer cool in hot climates. Unfortunately, whilst Cotton has its advantages, it also has certain drawbacks regarding its use in staff uniform - it doesn't wear well, wrinkles easily and requires more care than synthetic fibres.

Polyester, a synthetic fibre, developed in the early 1940's, has a number of attributes that make it ideal for staff uniform: It's strong, durable, dries quickly and is wrinkle resistant but in its standard form is not as comfortable on the skin as Cotton. Consequently, Polyester is often blended with Cotton, to create a fabric that combines the best of both fibres: Cotton for wearer comfort and breathability and Polyester for strength, durability and ease of care.

As a result, Polyester/Cotton is currently the most commonly used fabric for staff uniform Polos however in recent years technical Polyester fibres (such as Coolmax), that were first developed for use in high-end sportswear, have begun to be used for staff uniform Polos.

Technical Polyester fibres were specifically engineered to wick moisture from the skin in order to keep athletes cool and performing at their peak: Strong, yet soft to the touch, quick to dry and easy to care for, they represent the current state of the art in fibre design. Fabrics made from these fibres are already being used in areas as diverse as the military and Formula 1 racing and in the next ten years it's likely we will see them being put to even wider use, in fact there are already Polo Shirts available for staff uniform and sales are beginning to increase.

For general use, Polyester/Cotton remains the right fabric for most staff uniform Polos and a 50/50 mixture of fibres provides the best balance between comfort and wear.

A Weighty Issue

The weight of the fabric is also an important consideration and the right choice will result in an embroidered Polo Shirt that is suitable for the working environment, comfortable for the wearer and durable enough to offer real value for money for the company.

Leaving aside the technical Polyester Polos, which are inherently lightweight, Polyester/Cotton Polo Shirts tend to start from around 160 to 170gsm (GSM stands for grams per square metre, a unit of measurement now commonly used in the textile industry). Whilst these lightweight Poly/Cotton Polos are cheap to buy, they tend to feel flimsy and with regard to an embroidered Polo Shirt, they do not provide a stable enough fabric on which to embroider. Lightweight Polo shirts can be used for budget promotional give-aways but rarely do they offer real value for money as an item of staff uniform.