Menswear comes out of the closet

Menswear has undergone a quiet revolution in the past 10 years, albeit it at warp factor 8 given just how much ground it had to make up in such a short space of time to catch up with the predominantly women's wear dominated market.

Metrosexual Man was the biggest evolutionary change in the history of mankind since Homo Erectus took his first tentative steps on two limbs or David Beckham donned his first sarong.

For the first time in history the thought of a guy actually going out to shop for his own clothes actually became socially acceptable. And men even found it to be quite a pleasurable experience. Let's face it, it beats putting up another bloody shelf!

Something for the weekend?

Men who grew up wondering why their dad spent every Saturday morning at the barber's (until they found out it was the only way he could buy a condom), even started moisturising, going for a manicure or a "back, sack and crack wax". And when they started wearing make-up, no one batted a carefully lined eyelid.

But that was for the brave few exhibitionists and narcissists of the pack. The great unwashed remained firmly ensconced in their closet, until finally saved by the arrival of online shopping on the internet, the modern-day equivalent of their father's chair at the barber's.

Today of course in the enlightened Noughties we no longer go to the barber's. It's now called the hairdressing salon and the barber has morphed into a personal stylist. Mine's called Jennifer. She's 5ft, can't weigh more than seven stone and can pull 20kg more than me on the seated rowing machine at the gym. Jennifer can sniff out smut at a hundred yards with a clothes peg on her nose.

Her curiosity was immediately aroused when I first let slip that I'd recently joined a T shirt designer company. Jennifer soon twigged to the fact that T shirts were not the only thing you could print on and when I mentioned that we even had a customer who wanted to print on party balloons, her suspicions were confirmed.

"I knew it", she snapped, "Condoms!" as her imagination went into overdrive working out the length of message she could fit on a condom using her none too sparse array of previous boyfriends as mental guineapigs. Her last partner but one could only manage a "Hey" unfortunately.

Microcosmic

Don't laugh, but in many ways condoms, the ultimate male accessory, are a microcosm of the menswear industry. What could be more intimate, personal or closely associated with a man's pride (and joy) than a condom?

They're gender specific, politically correct, socially responsible, make a statement, and most important of all provide pleasure.

They come in all shapes and sizes, all colours and a vast array of styles and textures, from ultra-sensitive to extra strong and from plain to ribbed. They even come in a growing and ever expanding variety of flavours, but we haven't quite figured out how to funnel that down a broadband connection yet. Which brings us to the technological challenges.

It goes without saying you're going to have to tread very cautiously when using an embroidery machine if you want to avoid a host of lawsuits from unwitting fathers-to-be. If you don't keep your heat press turned down to minimum you're liable to end up with a gooey mess. And that high res pic of Pamela Anderson's achievements is more likely to look like a Modigliani by the time your little soldier is standing to attention. And as for a black French tickler, let's just not go there. I jest, of course.

A call to arms

Everyone knows the internet is by far the most vibrant part of the consumer retail market. All the consumer marketing statistics confirm that men are steadily making inroads into the personal grooming, skincare, cosmetics and clothing sector and grabbing an ever bigger share of the pie. Last year in the UK we spent more than £920 million on personal grooming alone. So hold your head up high guys and go forth and sow the seeds of your future success.

Trade online

Get that website stepped up a gear and don't just make a token gesture to a couple of T shirts and a hoodie. Personalise, specialise...and most importantly of all advertise!

Get a state-of-the-art garment designer added to the site which will allow your customers to personalise their garments with their own unique designs.

And get a good but manageable selection of garments into the catalogue that will appeal to a broad cross section of the market, from the fashion end to the workwear and leisure end of the spectrum.

Here at RSK Tech we're amazed by the variety of specialist male sports, hobbies and leisure pastimes that generate a requirement for personalized leisurewear and equipment - none of which involve donning a condom. It can be anything from football to badminton, or fly fishing to yachting. As your business grows and your printing and/or embroidery capacity grows with it you can also look at going down the affiliate route by propagating links to other specialist websites, clubs or associations and providing all of the fulfilment for a growing network of online retail sites from your own print or embroidery shop.

At RSK Tech we have the technology to let you do all of this. We have versions and editions of our garment designer suited to different garment decoration technologies and different sizes of business.

We can also do API integration work on your behalf to integrate our designer with other shopping cart or business systems or manage full custom projects for enterprise level solutions for wholesalers and larger garment decoration companies.

You wouldn't believe some of the things we get asked to adapt our online designer to print on. And never ones to say "no" we're always prepared to rise to the challenge.

Try, try and try again

So, to finish my tale. I can't help but admire Jennifer. Having paid for my haircut and left her to her reverie, I was walking home from the salon when I heard her calling out: "Mr Cameron. I've got it. See if you can solve this one. Personalised pessaries!"

"Scotty, beam me up. My mission's complete".

For more information on the RSK Tech range of custom decoration designer solutions call 0800 043 8518, email sales@rsktech.com or visit www.rsktech.com

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