Corporate Uniforms for Trades: size splits

A trade crew size curve sits higher and wider than a general office one, and layering pushes it higher again. Order the base garments to measured sizes and the outer layers a step up so they fit over what is underneath. Sizes can be mixed freely inside the fifty-piece minimum, so the curve costs nothing to shape correctly.

Watch for the gap between what people say and what they wear. Ask a crew for sizes and a good proportion will name the one they wore several years ago, which produces a curve skewed a full step small and a delivery of garments that are technically correct and practically unwearable. Measuring, or at least handing round a real garment, corrects that in a way no amount of asking will. It is twenty minutes of work set against a run you will be living with for a year.

What size curve fits a trade crew?

Weight it towards the larger middle of the range rather than the centre of a standard chart. Crews skew away from the smallest sizes, and ordering a symmetrical spread is what leaves a box of unopened smalls in a site cabin. Two or three sizes will carry the bulk of the run; the ends should be thin but present.

Measure rather than ask where you can. Handing round one garment at a toolbox talk and writing down what fits takes twenty minutes and produces a far better list than a WhatsApp thread. The relationship between measurements and labels is covered in the sizing and fit guide.

How much room does layering need?

A layer up, generally. Anything worn over a base garment on a cold site has to clear a long-sleeve top and sometimes a fleece, and a jacket ordered to a chest measurement will fit in July and be unwearable in January. State in the brief that outer layers are being ordered for layering, so the fit recommendation accounts for it rather than assuming next-to-skin wear.

Length is the other dimension people forget. Operatives spend the day reaching and bending, and a garment that rides up at the back is the one that gets left in the van. Where a longer body is available on a style, it is usually the better choice for site work. What goes into a site programme is set out on the construction and trades page.

How do you avoid boxes of unworn smalls?

Order the outliers thin and keep a record of what is issued. After one cycle the issue log tells you exactly where the crew sits, and the second run can be shaped around real numbers instead of an estimate. Since the minimum counts pieces of a design and not sizes, shifting units from an outlier into the middle costs nothing. Rates for each garment are on the wholesale uniforms page.

Keep any genuinely unused outliers rather than clearing them out. Crews change, subcontractors arrive, and the size nobody needed last year is occasionally the only one that fits a new starter.

Be careful about applying one curve across several trades. Groundworkers, electricians and finishing teams do not necessarily share a build profile, and a company covering all three will find the combined curve flatter than any individual one. If you hold issue records by trade, order to the combined shape but keep the per-trade numbers, because they tell you which sites to send which boxes to when the delivery arrives.