Gentleman's Agreement: A Disappearing Trend: UniformMarketNews.com

"So many things have changed," Dave Hindlemann reflects. "It used to be a handshake was a man's word. Now, it's lawyers and contracts – cut and dried. The personal element is missing."  (“Made to Measure Magazine," Spring/Summer, 1997).

If you’ve been talking with your colleagues lately, or even if you’ve been involved personally, you’ve probably noticed that our society has changed when it comes to the way in which it does business.  Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac aside, credit crunch and housing markets, too, the uniform industry has been hit with the same kinds of changes in ethical behavior—not only from customers, but from our own small family of apparel manufacturers and suppliers.

More and more, companies are refusing to lend credit, expecting prompt payments with 50% down and balance prepaid before delivery.  More and more customers find themselves short and not wanting to pay their bills, no matter how loyal they’ve been in the past.  Return authorizations are being required from corporations that heretofore accepted merchandise sent back as a matter of courtesy: Good will is no longer the name of the game.  One or two bad customers can shift more friendly relaxed business policies away from good will, towards harsh, stiff penalties. 

Companies that have previously been referred to as being legitimate have no qualms about writing out contracts or purchase orders, and reneging on them without blinking an eye.   Jobbers who buy and sell goods are paradigm.  They offer rock bottom prices, insist the selling customer wrap and label every bolt of fabric (costing hundreds of dollars in labor), change the terms as much as two or three times, and then feel free drop the contract, altogether, knowing that a lawsuit against them would cost the aggrieved party far more than any sale would be worth.  A legal piece of paper means little.

Leading suppliers in the industry find themselves being “stiffed” over and over and over again as manufacturers drive their businesses into the ground, bankrupting themselves rather than closing up before their accounts can be paid.  It’s not one supplier; it’s not one manufacturer; that’s the tragedy of it.  It’s become a trend.  It’s almost as though one’s fellow human being doesn’t matter any more.  When President Harry Truman said, “The buck stops here, he was referring to responsibility—fiscal and otherwise—not his inside pockets.

Commission sales?  Repeat sales?  Whatever happened to customer loyalty?  Whatever happened to a vendor calling on loyal customers?  Whatever happened to salespeople respecting colleagues’ territories?  Whatever happened to companies who used to sell strictly wholesale, but have decided additionally to sell retail, and also undercut their own sales forces by going direct to the customer with a cheaper price than a salesman could offer?

Whatever happened to identity companies that used to make their money solely on embroidery or screen printing—that now sell garments at cost to retail customers in addition, so that the uniform companies have to struggle to compete with those on whom they once depended for wholesale service?

Sound like a lot of whining?  No.  It’s about business ethics:  Respect for one’s fellow, and genuine love of a game that includes the players as well as the rewards.

Women are treated shamefully.  One woman who owned a contract shop first had to bring in her father to gain respect, and then her husband.  The irony is that her 50+ employees are 99% women.  It’s not only about men, but women themselves don’t respect other women as leaders in our industry.  Another smart, savvy gal with whom I spoke waxed philosophical and said that one must be tolerant, bite the bullet and keep one’s mouth shut, not stooping to the level of those who insult people merely because of their gender.  Sounds stoic and mature.  Not so easy to do. 

There was the company who lifted all the drawings from one website to its own, copyright laws aside.  It wasn’t about a link.  The kicker is that the one company was actually doing business with the other at the time of the thievery.   How sad that in such a small and close group of professionals such as ours, each business—mostly small in size, as we struggle to band together to survive  offshore manufacturing that is biting at our heels—has to sleep with one eye open, so to speak. 

Independent contractors are often of a dubious sort at best:  Deadlines and quality control are mysteries left unsolved until the work is turned in.   One can only hope.  

Still and all, it must be said that there are the good guys, too.  What’s encouraging, it isn’t about age.  One might think would be.  There are younger people and older people who are kind, disciplined, and principled; a part of old school values.  Make no mistake that such is the case.

Vendors pitch in to help one another in a tight spot, all the time.  And it’s swell.   However, it’s not about whole companies or general policies any more.  It’s not common practice, but rather the exception to the rule.  People are nice, people take an interest.  But the reality is our industry is so besieged by offshore pressures and survival tactics, the real people who matter often get lost in the shuffle.  That’s what’s sad.


The important thing is that when you go home, you want to be able to sleep at night.  If your approach and behavior toward your customers and colleagues are quite literally the same as those with which you would want them to treat you, then you know you’re on the right path.  If not, perhaps you need to make some changes.   There’s nothing wrong with being competitive or wanting to win the sale.  But there’s a tragedy if it’s at human expense when the price is good will, trust, respect, integrity, and responsibility. 

Ragtime Cowboy Joe: UniformMarketNews.com

I’d like to say a few words about the cowboy shirt, (or perhaps I could hum a few bars if I were a Country Western singer).  For many, this particular item may be somewhat unfamiliar—either because one grew up in a part of the country that doesn’t have cowboys, or because one is just too young to have been exposed to the culture of the Old West.  But for those who do remember Hopalong Cassidy, Roy Rogers, and Gene Autry, they can readily acknowledge that the cowboy shirt is as much a part of our American heritage as those cattle punchers, themselves.

The actual garment, as it is today, was developed by Jack A. Weil, who came to Colorado in 1928, and eventually perfected a shirt that appealed to the modest income of the men who worked the open range.  Certainly, there were men herding cattle long before Weil, and who continued to do so even as the legend of the Wild West was coming to a close—a result of the settlers who came in droves. But Weil is the one credited with giving the official shirt its modern-day appearance.  As he said, the West is a state of mind: It didn’t have a specific place or time; he built on that concept, with the myth being more prominent than the reality.   

It was Weil who put snaps on the garments, for example, instead of buttons:  A snap couldn’t be torn off by barbed wire fences, a cowpoke was not going to sew on a missing button, and a steer couldn’t catch its horn in the button hole.  The broad yoke across the shoulders tended to make a man look larger, stronger; the tighter upper arms gave the appearance of bigger muscles, so that the cowboy tended to look as heroic as the legends that were written about him.  The sawtooth scalloped pockets kept tobacco pouches inside: Whereas a standard pocket was too open, these had flaps that snapped shut. Wide, snug cuffs kept dirt, campfires, and critters at bay.

The garments were worn regularly by presidents such as Johnson and Reagan, movie stars such as Elvis Presley and Robert Redford, and everyday folks just like you and me—cattlemen and city slickers alike.  Certainly, they became a part of the giant entertainment industry, whether it was “Gunsmoke,” “The Rifleman,” or “True Grit”—radio, television, and film.

So what, you ask, does all this have to do with uniforms?  Everything.  The whole purpose of the uniform is to set a person apart by defining his separate and unique role from the surrounding milieu.  It’s about identity.  It’s about sameness within a range of variation: Everyone who wears a uniform dresses alike, but stands for or is doing something different from those who are not wearing that very same clothing. 

The cowboy shirt thrusts an individual into a different culture, a different time period, and a different place from where he would ordinarily and otherwise be.  Yet, every cowboy can easily identify with all of the other cowboys because they have the same cowboy dress and the same cowboy values.  There is a sense of unity that is strongly present.

The everyday cowboy shirt, made of chambray, denim, a cotton flannel, cotton or a poly-cotton, is what is most commonly worn. They come in stripes, plaids, checks, solids, calicoes, and prints.  Referred to as work uniforms, the cowboy styling can be seen on the open range, or the plains behind a tractor.  It can be seen at the gas station, the repair shop, at the grocery store, or in church on a Sunday morning.  Many folks prefer the tighter western cut pants and the western-styled shirts to the standard cuts and looser fits.

Using the cowboy shirt for performances, it becomes a costume, but a uniform, nevertheless.  Everyone matches, basically does the same thing, and is set apart from the greater whole.  The great cowboy shirt designers, such as Turk and Nudie were extraordinary in their day—when legends such as Tom Mix, Rex Allen and the rest were all great idols who represented independent, rough-riding Americans. 

These shirts were and are still made with hand-set rhinestones, custom applied braid and cording, and embroidery discs that are thirty-forty thousand stitches per disc, with as many as six discs per shirt.  They’re made of heavy polyester, poly-wool, or charmeuse and satin fabrics, and cost upward of $500 per garment.  In and of themselves, they are works of art.

But make no mistake: When you watch the Rose Bowl parade or go to the state fairs; when you attend the National Western Stock Show in Denver, or follow the rodeos around the country; when you go to Nashville, or watch the round-up’s in Wyoming and the Northwest; if you travel to the Southwest or to National Park country; if you encounter a state patrol or the sheriff, you’ll see cowboy shirts.  

It’s a sad passing that the cowboy shirt isn’t as ubiquitous as it used to be, because it stands for a part of the American character and time that is becoming less and less of a presence.  It stands for American values that, like the shirt itself, are unique during all the history of civilization.   Pragmatic, practical, innovative, remarkable, stylish in an uncompromising and non-traditional way: That’s the American cowboy shirt, that’s the West that it represents, and that is the fiber of our nation.