All the best for the Christmas season and the New Year!

Not to mention new decade.....


There's not a lovingly printed t-shirt in sight in this image but we like it, captured earlier this year in our village base of Thames Ditton by yours truly!

Envision - The Truth about Youth

Envision is a national education charity that provides hands on support to young people in schools and colleges in the Uk on issues such as citizenship, sustainable development and help for their local communities. They do this through organising practical projects that will have a positive impact on these young people, their schools and communities.

We were asked by Envision to produce t-shirts for the launch event of their Truth About Youth campaign, itself entitled The Kick Off because it was held at Villa Park, the home of Aston Villa in Birmingham.

Over 300 volunteers attended the event, representing a larger network of 800 young people in Birmingham who are giving up an hour a week for the nine months to develop their own youth-led community action projects. These will tackle issues ranging from youth stereotypes to climate change - the former issue giving rise to the Truth About Youth title.

There was an important networking element to the event - all about encouraging young people and adults to actively engage with each other on important issues such as sustainability, community cohesion, social justice and climate change. The Kick Off was just the first of many other events, activities and programmes that will give a voice to the views and opinions of the young people of Birmingham. Over the course of the 2 year campaign the Truth About Youth will aim to support over 700 young people to deal positively with the challenge of growing up in an environment where there is all too often a mistrust of youth.

In the photo participants had just received our t-shirts and look well pleased with what they've got (we did not set this shot up, honest!). The ethics that go into out t-shirt printing from source to the environmentally friendly printing processes mean that the t-shirts match the principles of the campaign.

Find out more about Envision at their website.

Great Gorillas! 2009 update....

It was about a year ago when we first featured one of our more quirky clients, the Gorilla Organization who promote the annual Great Gorilla Run through the streets of London.

No client buys as many oversized T-shirts as the Gorilla Organisation does. This is where the XXL size comes into its own, having to fit over a gorilla costume worn by a participant who is often lean - and definitely fit - to complete a 7km run and entertain bemused and amused passers by on the streets of the City of London.

Last year we focussed on the race itself, but the race itself has to be promoted throughout the year to ensure that as many participants as possible run to raise sponsorship. This means that gorilla volunteers are out in their gorilla suits and our Great Gorilla Run T-shirts earlier in the year signing up new runners.

The most successful promotion of the run centred on the 4th plinth at Trafalgar Square. Yes, a supporter of the Gorilla Organisation commandeered the fourth plinth for an hour as part of Anthony Gormley's 100 day living monument "One and Other". The race participant Martin Payne took to the plinth in gorilla costume and Tshirt while dozens of gorilla suited supporters did a silent disco around the plinth, all wearing the Great Gorilla Run T. The organisers not only raised the profile of the event through the video coverage (see here) but also sold many Tshirts on the day to onlookers at Trafalgar Square, many of whom joined in the disco.

This year over 600 participants turned out for the Great Gorilla Run on 26 September. Many had been inspired by Martin's performance and the silent gorilla disco dancers of Trafalgar Square.

A new look at TShirtPrinters.UK.com

Many familiar with the Pier 32 site will not necessarily be aware of our separate TShirt printing site at TShirtPrinters.UK.com. That site gets a mention in our blog because it has just undergone a design revamp aimed at bringing our ethical options on promotional clothing to the attention of a generally younger audience involved in the music and events industries, and the student audience in general.

Whether involved in the promotion of bands, organisation of an event or festival, running a campaign or simply promoting a student society, young people are acutely aware of ethical issues in the clothing industry but also face financial constraints. The new site will communicate with these people and present the options that Pier32 has available in a punchy youth targetted design.

The site will carry some youth oriented lines not available at the Pier 32 site. So if you are looking to promote your band or event, check out the new TShirtPrinters.UK.com.

Looking forward to Autumn

It's been a while since our last blog update - the summer holiday period and other diversions (related to this business I should add!) have meant that the blog had taken second place to these other activities. But here we are at the keyboard again and what we want to do now is update you of some exciting developments that are around the corner....

We've been looking at new ranges of clothing to offer to expand our offerings to more specific industries and groups. In particular we have been impressed with the new customisable clothing that Kustom Kit have in their new ranges and we will shortly be presenting three new collections aimed at:

The Hospitality Industry - a range of clothing aimed at bars, restaurants, hotels and the catering sector. Christened 'Bargear', comfortable and stylish tailoring to ensure that your staff remain presentable, looking smart and cool in the hot house atmoshere that can often arise in these industries.

Sports Clubs - here Kustom Kit bring 'Gamegear'. Whether you run a health club or a sports team this is a new range of clothing in 'Cooltex' which looks to bring style, comfort and value into this market.

Corporate Wear - from more formal shirts to 'smart casual' the new Corporate wear collection is aimed at teams operating in public facing roles in a host of industries, with 'non-iron' cotton among the options on offer.

As you might expect from a company whose range Pier 32 chooses to promote, Kustom Kit operate under a comprehensive Ethical Code.

We are also looking forward to putting on line the new catalogue of clothing from Starworld, our Egyptian based supplier of ethical promotional clothing with WRAP certification and a great value organic range too. Starworld continues to be the best value out there for organisations whose buying considerations include price, quality and the welfare of the worker along the supply chain.

Finally, we are looking to carry out a revamp of our website. We've been listening to comments that, for example, t-shirts can be found under no less than 3 headings in our drop down menus. What we aim to do is have easy links for t-shirts, sweatshirts, hoodies, kids wear, Hi Viz gear and many other items as well as the new kustom Kit ranges. Behind these links you will find our most popular lines of promotional clothing, whether the source is Starworld, the Continental fashion range or the many other options in our 'Clothing Catalogue'. There will also be Ethical pen pictures of the suppliers to hand with further links to our Ethical Brand Profiles in this blog. The aim, together with our fast, responsive "Quick Quote" service, always backed up with our friendly telephone advice, is to make the whole process of buying custom promotional clothing - ethically - as easy as possible for our customers.

Tomorrow is Earth Day - and a great idea from WRAP

WRAP (Worldwide Responsible Accredited Production) - a very important organisation to Pier 32 in our efforts to make sure that we bring our customers ethically produced clothing - announced its support for Earth Day (tomorrow, 22nd April) by offering all its staff members a half-day leave to work on the environmental project of their choice.

"In our constant communication with facility owners, buyers, trade associations, governments, labour leaders, relevant NGOs and consumers, it is clear that the term 'sustainability' for the environment and the planet means action by us all", WRAP's President and CEO, Steve Jesseph said. "To support Earth Day, our offices will close at noon, April 22, to allow all staff members to work on the environmental project of their choice. We encourage all WRAP-certified facilities, and all those with a concern for the environment, to actively support Earth Day 2009."

By the way, "The Green Generation" is the theme for Earth Day 2009, campaigning on three fronts:

1. A carbon-free future based on renewable energy that will end our common dependency on fossil fuels, including coal.
2. An individual's commitment to responsible, sustainable consumption.
3. Creation of a new green economy that lifts people out of poverty by creating millions of quality green jobs and transforms the global education system into a green one.

Want to know more about Earth Day?

Meanwhile, in looking at this news on the WRAP website we also noted that WRAP is developing an enhanced environmental program called "WRAPe" scheduled to launch this year. We look forward to being able to report more.

Our client - Quad Safari

We've featured many of our clients that use our clothing to promote events, but here's something a little different in that Quad Safari not only kit out their own people with Hoodies and T-Shirts supplied by Pier 32 but also sell them on to the public as fashion clothing.

Quad Safari sell their clothing on their site and through their online shop. Visit the shop to see the huge importance placed on the fact that these garments are manufactured by Starworld in Egypt to the exacting WRAP (Worldwide Responsible Accredited Production) standards. The clothing's environmental credentials with Oeko-Tex 100 certification are also very important.

Charles Barry of Quad Safari told us:

"Pier 32 has been great to work with; everything from the help in designing the artwork, to delivering on time, they have been professional from start to finish. Quad Safari chose Pier 32 above the rest, because we demand high quality garments that are hard wearing, affordable and ethically sourced. The Starworld clothing is considerably better quality than other personalised clothing that you see."

If you, like Quad Safari, want people to go on wearing the clothing because of the promotional benefit it brings then we think that our design service is just what you need helping to turn a potential promotional throwaway into something that you'd want to wear again and again. With the WRAP and Oeko-Tex certifications, and their hard wearing characteristics, Starworld garments also provide that all important "keep me, I'm special" feeling that you get when you are given or buy something with a little more value than the crowd.

Quad Safari are happy that they are getting clothing that will be of long term promotional benefit to them; contact us at Pier 32 to find out how we can help you.

Met nicked! (our idea)

With our background supplying a range of charities and groups such as Stop the War Coalition, Global Justice and Student Action for Refugees, it was no surprise when we were approached by the Met Police for advice on the best clothing to wear to police today's demonstrations in the City of London to coincide with the G20 global summit.

The brief was simple - to come up with clothing that would minimise the risk of violence so that the whole day would go off as peacefully as possible.

We sent our design team to New Scotland Yard and there, in consultation with some of the front line officers, we came up with our masterplan. The police we argued, were as impacted by global warming and the collapse of the banks as many protesters. By avoiding wearing riot gear and dressing in our simple fluorescent t-shirts - and their regular hats of course - they would be able to stand out from the crowd and demonstrate their intent to avoid any nastiness. Further, we suggested that the t-shirts should carry slogans to demonstrate their affinity with many of the views of the protesters - slogans such as:

• Bring peace to the streets - hug a masked hoodie
• My patrol car's a Prius, my other car is a police horse
  
• I bank with RBS, and
• It's a fair cop - Fair Trade Now!

We also suggested that as many of the protesters would be carrying flowers, the police should carry daffodils rather than truncheons.

Those of you looking at the scenes today can see our disappointment that our idea did not get carried through. But they did nick some of our ideas! At the time of writing there is no sign of riot gear and all the police are wearing fluorescent yellow!

But we don't mind, right now things are relatively peaceful - and let's hope it stays that way.

High tech meets fair trade

We could not help but notice this article "Ethical Sourcing - Securing Values as well as Value in the Supply Chain" in our travels around the web. It seems that the revolution in the clothing industry, with fair trade, eco friendly and organic products taking up more and more shelf space, has been spotted by those outside the industry in the consulting speak worlds of ERP and PDM.

For those not in the know, that's Enterprise Resource Planning and Product Development Management. Wiser now? Maybe. Let's put it another way. The writer of the article would have you think that the romantic vision of the buyer from a fashion store getting on a tiny single prop plane to some remote Indonesian island to sign a contact to supply garments to the UK high street on the verandah of a colonial style 19th century home is well and truly dead. This vision is replaced, yes, by a computer which at one end measures what's shifting off the shelves and at the other end evaluates the supplier options in terms of ethical credentials and price to automatically order just the right amount of clothing from the right supplier at the best price and move those garments to hit the shelves in teh High Street just before they become empty.

"User configurable fields allow you to input information regarding aspects such as a supplier's child labour avoidance, management accountability, wages and working hours. From this data Syscom PDM calculates a colour-coded ethical trading rating for each supplier".

It goes further in trying to make sure that big companies are not cought out my the odd rogue supplier:

"Having software in place that provides.... traceability is crucial. Choose a system that offers multi-dimensional item coding.... allows goods and materials to be traced through variable sourcing, manufacturing and finishing processes, creating transparency across the supply chain".

It will be some time before Pier 32 installs an ERP system. We'll be using good old human contact for a while yet. But we're fascinated to see how changes in the clothing industry have been noticed outside that industry and the importance of ethical issues spreads to suppliers not normally associated with high ethical awareness.

Ethical production spreading in Asia

With much of the globe's clothing production being concentrated in Asia it's good to see signs that many ethical and environmental values are being focussed on by many producers in Asia. And this, it seems, is a reaction to the general trend in the USA and Europe towards a more ethical outlook rather than as the direct result of Western companies intervening to force production. It's in anticipation of the market moving that way.

We particularly noted this trend in an AFP article "Eco Concerns Slowly Turning Asia's Textiles Green" which to note a few points:

• At the Paris Texworld textile trade fair it was noted how in China, Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, South Korea and Taiwan the production of natural fibres and organic yarns under fair trade practices and clean processing had been subject to a sharp increase
• Eco-Friendly is the buzz word - it apparently adds 15% to production costs but this is more and more seen to be a price worth paying
• Companies are gearing up towards increased production of organic cotton and hemp
• Even in China the message is hitting home
  

Producers accept the increased cost of eco-friendly production - but a worry is the additional cost of accreditation without which eco-friendly claims are viewed with submission.

Here at Pier 32, aside from the even more stringent organic certifications, it is the Oeko-Tex environmental standard you will find on much of the clothing we sell. Look out for it when ordering your next printed t-shirts.