PPE and workwear: how do you equip your employees properly?

Professional clothing occupies a far from negligible place in the apparel landscape. For companies that equip their employees, it means a dedicated in-house department, but also a major source of logistical difficulties. How can that problem be overcome while remaining efficient and innovative?

A niche sector growing fast

For some years now, the professional clothing sector has been going through major change: once a simple uniform, it has become a multi-purpose product, extending into corporate wear and ensuring the safety and comfort of the staff kitted out with it. On top of that, employees now expect their professional equipment to combine safety and style.

In France, close to 8 million employees are concerned by professional clothing. It is a market faring better than ready-to-wear, generating 600 million euros in revenue, with Cepovett, Mulliez-Flory and DMD France as its main players.

Unlike consumer fashion, workwear is aimed at B2B companies and does not build its collections around the seasons. These are technical products with a high R&D added value, designed to protect the people who wear them.

So this is a fast-moving market, one that is starting to open up gaps between the various players in the field. The needs of industrial companies are changing too, and offering additional services to meet their expectations is not always straightforward in such a technical sector.

An industry that is still archaic

For a company, equipping its employees calls for costly development and an execution plan that can prove long and painful. When specific outfits are handed out, you have to be able to supply a garment in the right size for every employee in order to guarantee their comfort and their safety. That means a complex process internally, but at the customer’s end as well:

• Receiving the outfits and testing them for comfort and safety takes an average of 1 hour of allocated time and a trip costing €15
• Getting employees together to kit them out takes up to half a day
• Taking employees’ measurements means calling in an expert and takes up around 20 minutes of each employee’s time
• Recording the measurement data is a long and tedious activity, often a source of errors and not standardised
• The collection of sizes is not always properly followed up
• Starting the whole measuring exercise again for every new member of staff means tying up another day
• A great deal of time goes on waiting for the outfits and transporting them (nearly 50%)
• All in all, planning and allocating employees’ sizes can take up to 2 weeks and cost 2 weeks of revenue

This whole process demands internal and external resources, ties up employees’ time and calls for a sizeable budget. What is more, the big suppliers of professional clothing are long-established companies: allocating the right outfits to employees is a cumbersome process that has yet to go digital. Their time is not optimised and the spending on this procedure is heavy.

The professional clothing market is also a competitive one, where the size of a company has an impact on how long it lasts. Being a long-established company means being able to produce made-to-measure uniforms and mass production. But smaller companies have to innovate to stay in the race.

How can the allocation of professional outfits be optimised without setting aside a sizeable budget for it?

Delivering ultra-service through digital

To cut the time and the spending needed to equip employees, suppliers of professional clothing have to offer their customers ultra-service. Being able to support their customer throughout the life cycle of the offer on the table.

In other words, making up for a client company’s lack of time and knowledge with the technical expertise a supplier possesses. That supplier must be able to prove its industry know-how through R&D and its tailored support through size allocation. Knowing how to recommend the right garment size means guaranteeing the quality of a product: the cut, the fit and the safety finishes are matched to each person’s body shape.

From a logistics point of view, it also makes exchanges between supplier and manufacturer easier by going through digital channels. On site or online, employees find the size best suited to their body shape and the information is easily shared with the supplier.

With no need to take an employee’s measurements, the process is faster: no getting undressed, no waiting, no failing to find the size to try on. Stock is therefore better managed, sizes are allocated more quickly and the dedicated budget is optimised.

Automating size allocation with a digital solution means innovating, saving time and delivering ultra-service to your customers.

How do you support employees in the allocation of sizes? How would you like to innovate in your services?

Talk to our team to find out which digital solution fits your needs