At Sheraton and Other Hotels, Retail-inspired Looks Redefining Uniform Industry

 By Jackie Rosselli

Uniform. Always the same, unchanging, unvarying. Consistent in appearance, having an unvaried texture, color or design. Being the same as another or others.

Pick up any American dictionary, and you’ll probably find these or similar definitions. For years, too, these were the terms used to describe the uniform marketplace. It was considered by many, whether industry insider or casual observer, to be a business of the ordinary, the prosaic.

No more. Thanks to the convergence of technology, culture and a savvy consumer, today’s uniforms are anything but ordinary. Indeed, today’s designs, and the creative minds behind them, are reshaping the industry landscape, redefining what constitutes a uniform program.

Nowhere is this more evident than in the hotel apparel industry. Hotels nationwide are more image conscious that ever before, desiring styling options and looks that stretch the boundaries of uniform programs, creating challenges for those who design them. “The only thing nowadays that makes it a uniform is that more than one person is wearing it,” says Jeff Marino, designer and trend-watcher for Cintas. “Clients and endusers alike have become more sophisticated, and hotels have had to step up.”

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Don't Be Fooled

 By Joseph Greco, M.S.O.D.

Influence is a powerful tool. So powerful that author Robert B. Cialdini, Ph.D., refers to “weapons” of influence in his book The Psychology of Persuasion. In our daily activities most of us are selling something. Obviously if you are in sales, you are selling your company’s products or services to customers. But internal sales are a fact of life, whether you perceive the efforts as such or not. If you’re the CFO with responsibility for developing a corporate budget, that proposal must be sold to the executive committee. The product you offer needs to gain acceptance. If the concept of selling or the connotation of the word ‘sales’ bothers you, think of the concept of persuasion. Influence is the psychology of persuasion.

Many (or all) of us not only sell and need to persuade others to accept our ideas but we are also ‘sold to’ by others. We are customers. As a leader, your success will hinge on the acceptance of your mission’s values and goals by all stakeholders: customers, associates, vendor-partners and investors.

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Product News: Dickies, American Fibers & Yarns and Blackinton

This month’s product offerings focus on a new line of women’s workwear from Dickies, a fabric for active lifestyles from American Fibers and Yarns, and the long-anticipated announcement regarding V.H. Blackinton’s RFID-embedded police badges.

V.H. Blackinton & Co. Inc. has developed a badge for law enforcement and government agencies with an embedded radio frequency identification (RFID) chip it plans to launch in August, according to a company press statement.

Counterfeit badges have been a concern in law enforcement for quite some time, but the issue was brought to a boil after 9/11. On May 9, 2005, Sergio Khorosh, a Russian and permanent U.S. resident, was arrested in New York by federal agents. The charge? Possession and sale of more than 1,300 high quality, counterfeit law enforcement badges that included shields from 35 different federal, state and local agencies.

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