Buying branded workwear is the easy part. Getting it onto every member of your team, in the right size, without ending up with a stockroom full of unworn 3XL polos, is where most uniform rollouts come unstuck.
Most of the problems are avoidable, and nearly all of them come from doing the steps in the wrong order. Here is a sequence that works, whether you are kitting out eight people or two hundred.
Step 1: Decide what the uniform has to do before you pick garments
It sounds obvious, but a lot of rollouts start with "we like that polo" and work backwards. Start with the job instead. Write down, in a line or two each:
- Who needs to recognise your staff, and from how far away? A customer at a trade counter has different needs from a resident's family walking into a care home, or a member of the public spotting your van crew on a verge.
- What are they doing in it? Kneeling, lifting, driving, standing at a counter, moving between a warm office and a cold yard.
- How often will it be washed, and at what temperature?
- Do any roles need to be visually separate from each other?
Those four answers decide fabric weight, badging method and colour palette before you look at a single product page. If the garment gets washed at 60°C twice a week, you are looking at embroidery, not a print. If your team moves between heated and unheated spaces all day, you need a layering system rather than one heavyweight jacket.
Step 2: Build the garment list in three tiers
Trying to specify everything at once is what makes uniform projects stall. Split the list:
Core — what every member of staff gets, worn most days. Usually a polo or t-shirt, sometimes a shirt. This is the bulk of the order and the item you will reorder most often.
Seasonal — the layer that comes out from October to March. Fleeces, work hoodies, softshells or bodywarmers, depending on whether your team is mostly indoors, mostly outdoors, or moving between the two.
Role-specific — hi-vis for anyone on a site or near vehicles, aprons or tabards for kitchen and housekeeping, waterproofs for field teams, a smarter shirt or jacket for anyone client-facing.
Cost the core tier properly and be relaxed about the rest. Getting five good polos onto everyone beats getting one of everything onto half the team.
Step 3: Do sizing before you order, not after
This is the single biggest source of waste. People guess their size, guess badly, and you reorder a third of the garments.
Two things fix it.
Get a size set in. A sample of each garment in a spread of sizes, available for staff to try on for a few days. It costs almost nothing next to reordering, and it removes the arguments.
Run a sizing session, and make it easy to attend. Put the size set somewhere people already go — the break room, the sign-in desk — for a full week covering at least one of each shift pattern. Collect sizes on a single sheet or shared form with a name against every size. Chase the stragglers before you place the order, not after.
Two details worth settling now: whether you are offering female-fit as well as unisex (for mixed teams you usually should), and whether staff wear the garment fitted or with room for a layer underneath. Ask people to try the winter layer on over the core layer, not on its own.
Step 4: Set the logo up once, and set it up properly
For embroidery, your logo is converted into a stitch file — this is called digitising, and it is a one-off job per logo per size. Get it right at the start and every reorder for the next five years uses the same file and comes out identical.
What to sort now:
- Send the best artwork you have. Vector files (AI, EPS, PDF) beat a screenshot lifted from your website every time.
- Agree the size the logo will be stitched at. A logo scaled down for a cap loses fine detail — small text and thin lines often need simplifying, and it is far better to approve that deliberately than to discover it on 60 finished garments.
- Decide the placement and write it down. Left chest is standard for a reason. Back and sleeve positions cost extra and should be a decision, not an accident.
- Pin down your thread colours. If your brand has an exact colour, get it matched once and recorded against your account.
Ask for a proof and approve it in writing. Ten minutes here saves a very expensive conversation later. If you want the detail, our guide to custom embroidery services walks through how logo setup works.
Step 5: Agree the rules before the boxes arrive
Write a half-page uniform policy. It does not need to be formal, it needs to exist:
- How many of each item does a person get? Three core garments is the usual minimum for anyone working five days — one on, one in the wash, one clean.
- Who replaces damaged or worn items, and how does someone request one?
- What happens when someone leaves? Named garments generally cannot be reissued. Generic ones can, if you have a sensible way to collect and launder them.
- Is it mandatory? If it is, say so. If people can mix it with their own clothes, define the boundaries now.
- Who holds the spares? Name a person and a cupboard.
Rollouts fail quietly when nobody owns the stock.
Step 6: Order in two waves
Do not order every garment you will ever need in one go. Order the core tier for everyone, plus a small buffer in the most common sizes. Live with it for a month.
You will learn things you could not have predicted — that one size runs small, that a colour shows marks badly, that the fleece is too warm for your building. Then place wave two knowing what actually works. The small premium on a second order is far cheaper than being wrong at scale.
Step 7: Hand it out properly
Bag and label each person's set by name before you distribute. Handing someone a bag with their name on it takes seconds and prevents the pile-in-the-corner problem, where the popular sizes vanish and three people end up with nothing.
Give people a wash-care steer at the same time: inside out, cooler wash, no fabric conditioner on technical fabrics, no tumble drying softshells. Branded workwear that lasts an extra six months pays for the whole rollout.
Common mistakes worth avoiding
- Ordering from a spreadsheet of guessed sizes
- Choosing a colour that is hard to reorder consistently
- Putting names on everything, including roles with high turnover
- Buying one heavyweight jacket instead of a layering system
- Leaving no named owner for stock and reorders
- Approving artwork by eye on a phone screen
FAQs
How many uniform items does each member of staff need?
For full-time staff, three core garments is a practical minimum. Part-time staff can usually manage on two. Seasonal layers are typically one or two per person, because they are worn over the core garment rather than against the skin.
Should we choose embroidery or print?
Embroidery for anything washed hot and often, and for anything you want to look established — polos, fleeces, softshells, caps. Print for large or full-colour designs, lightweight fabrics, and high-volume t-shirts where cost per unit matters most. Plenty of teams use both.
How long does a workwear rollout take?
Allow two to three weeks for sizing and artwork approval, then roughly 10–15 working days for production once everything is signed off. Starting six to eight weeks before you actually need the uniform gives you room for a reorder if something does not fit.
Can we add new starters later without reordering the whole lot?
Yes, provided your supplier keeps your logo file, colours and garment codes on your account. That is exactly why setting the logo up properly in step four matters — top-up orders should be a short email, not a fresh project.
Need a hand with a rollout?
CentralCustom kits out UK businesses, clubs, schools and care providers with embroidered and printed workwear, and we are happy to talk through sizing, garments and logo setup before you commit to anything.
- Embroidered polo shirts — the usual core garment
- Custom hi vis workwear — for site and roadside teams
- Custom embroidery services — how logo setup and digitising works
