If there's one constant that connects movie cinemas, golf courses, schools, aircrafts, salons, supermarkets, auto shops, police officers, fire fighters, and even veterinarians, it's the uniforms they wear. While the majority of uniforms are decorative and serve to identify staff, other uniforms like those worn by fire fighters, labourers, and engineers offer their users a much needed temporary barrier between their bodies and occupational hazards like fire, heat, splashes from hot metals and liquids, impact, cuts, acids, radiation, and other harmful chemicals.
Traditionally, uniform manufacturing is a highly skilled process. Manufacturers are called to design a wide range of products for corporate and private clients in diversified sectors like service and hospitality industries, manufacturing units, tourism and airlines, schools and institutions. While some factories specialize on mass-produced, affordable garments, others pride themselves on on delivering high-class apparel through bespoke services tailored to each client.
Once companies have set out tenders and settled on a vendor, the real work begins. First, the designing team gets to work on a creative, functional, and comfortable solution to the clients' sartorial needs. Designers take into account the company's brand identity, corporate colors, and job profiles. Loose, long garments, for example, would not be practical in an environment that requires their workers to be on their feet, physically active and dexterous. They'd also pose a hazard in situations where there are machines involved, as extra pieces of cloth might get stuck in equipment, leading to consequences for both the worker and the company's assets. Once an appropriate uniform is conceptualized, sketches are made and sent to the client. Once the client finalizes a pattern or look, designers then get to work on hammering down smaller details like color palettes, stylist changes and logo placement.
Next, expert cutters cut sample uniforms of different sizes as per the design specifications. If the uniform is meant to fit a wide range of bodies and styles, the cutters work to create garments that can function across sizes. These prototypes are then examined by experts and sent to the client for approval. At this point, minor changes can be made, followed by a few rounds of refinement to get to a final approved product. At this point, garments that have to withstand certain temperatures or conditions might also go through several rounds of testing to determine their durability. Finally, with all the groundwork completed, the garment goes into mass-production.
When a substantial amount of uniforms have been produced, they then undergo a stringent quality control process where their stitches, seams, patterns, cuts, and styles are all thoroughly examined.
Custom uniforms that require special care or techniques like embroidery, screen printing, transfer printing, direct to garment printing, and other customizations like extra pockets for security guards, easy washability for hospital workers, and heat-resistant qualities naturally incur extra charges, but their benefit speaks volumes in the long run.
To get a head start on your company's look or specific PPE requirements, we've curated a list of our top 10 uniform manufacturers and suppliers based in Doha, Qatar.