Introduction to National Safety Supplies Branding Division

Dedicated Branding Division

National Safety Supplies understand the significance of projecting a professional corporate image to your customer base regardless of your industry sector. In order to achieve this, we have invested heavily in the people and the infrastructure to deliver a dedicated branding division that can keep pace with your branding needs. The services we currently offer include:• Embroidery• Heatseal & Digital Printing• Personalised Branding• Tax Tabbing• Helmet Printing• Helmet Stickers• Man packing serviceOur knowledge and expertise in branding enables us to deliver a diverse portfolio of branding services that cater for the requirements of our diverse customer base. Integral to this process has been the ongoing training and development of a skilled team that is dedicated to branding and thrives on the challenge of delivering a consistently high standard of branded garments regardless of the size or complexity of the order.

Production

We currently process over 55,000 branding units each month and have a fully trained and flexible production team that solely manufacturer branded garments for our customer base. This enables us to cope effectively with changes in demand to ensure leadtimes are consistent and quality is not compromised. In order to deal with fluctuations in demand for the range of services we offer, we train our production team to a high standard in all the processes we employ to ensure we can cope effectively with peaks in demand.The robust storage and system control of our heatseal transfers and embroidery threads ensure that we carry the necessary stocks of all the components required to produce the finished product. Our wealth of experience of branding linked to our sophisticated stock management system enables us to keep tracks of stock levels and reorder points to cope with fluctuation in demand. This ensures we are not over stocked if you have a change to your brand requirements and we can effectively manage stock levels based on your anticipated future usage in addition to historical order patterns.

Quality Control Procedure

All garments are checked on receipt from our supply chain to ensure our stringent quality standards are met. This includes regular checks to ensure sizes and colour shades match our specification and tolerance levels. From a production perspective, we employ a dedicated Quality Control team to inspect all branded orders to ensure each item matches the approved customer design and the agreed standard of workmanship. All production machinery is maintained via service contracts to keep machine downtime to a minimum and to prevent unnecessary damage/wastage of garments. In addition, our Production Support team have an excellent working knowledge of all machinery on site and carry out daily inspections to ensure the quality of work is consistent and the health and safety of all team members is cared for. We also employ an order picking system whereby all orders are picked and produced by a different member of staff to identify any picking errors prior to commencement of production.Regular reviews and site visits are carried out with our suppliers of machinery and machine components (including embroidery thread,

heatseal transfers and design software) to ensure we can offer a diverse range of services that are tailor made to each industry and customer we deal with.To ensure your design matches your corporate identity, each new artwork will be sent for your approval.The Production team will then use this approval to ensure the correct designs goes onto the correct garment in the correct position.

Dedicated Pre-branded Stock Team

By employing a full time dedicated team for pre-brand stock we can ensure that your core consumable branded clothing is in stock for next day delivery and can be delivered with a wide range of PPE related products.Utilising a sophisticated stock control system, we are able to keep stock of a wide range of Pre-branded garments. All stock is recorded on our system which enables us to monitor stock closely and adjust stock levels to mirror your demand patterns. In addition, by having a full time team we are able to reduce the risk associated with pre-branded stock by tailoring our stock levels to your current requirements. We understand that a commitment to high levels of pre-branded stock can be prohibitive to effective cash flow management but also recognise that next day deliver requirements can be business critical especially for PPE branded garments such as HI visibility clothing and hard hats.

Branding Machinery

Excellent branding requires substantial investment in modern equipment that can produce high volumes without compromising on quality or design clarity. Our current range of machinery includes a number of dual headed embroidery machines that run consistently at speeds of 1000 stitches per minute and can produce complex designs of up to 16 colours. The dual headed touch screen machines deliver a high level of flexibility to our operation by allowing up to run two designs simultaneously on one machine. This ensures smaller run orders or individual wearer names can be produced in house without impacting on production output or machine downtime.A variety of heatseal machines capable of producing high volumes on a wide variety of garments are used to deliver consistent leadtimes for organisations with evolving branding requirements. We also keep a reserve fleet of heatseal machines so that we have machinery on standby for our flexible workforce. This also guarantees that any failures or machine maintenance does not impact on production output.

Leadtimes

Standard lead-time for embroidered and heatseal garments based on a wide range of core products is 4 working days from date of order if placed before 2pm (i.e. orders placed on Monday can be delivered on Friday). However, for contracts where specific product usage information is provided this can be reduced to meet your requirements without a commitment to branded stock. Pre-branded garments to agreed stock levels are delivered next day.

Packaging

In an effort to reduce our environment impact and reduce our carbon footprint, we aim to recycle the original packaging used to protect our garments. For larger orders of the same product and size we can (on request) repackage garments in larger protective packaging to reduce the amount of wasted packaging caused by

individual product packing. In addition, all outer packaging used to transport bulk deliveries throughout our supply chain are recycled by our waste management supplier. We also carry out an annual review with our suppliers to encourage them to use sustainably sourced or recycled packaging in order to reduce the tonnage of packaging we use each year.

Design & Administration Team

Our current design & administration team create on average 200 new artwork designs each month. The team work closely with our sales team and customers throughout the branding process to ensure they receive branded garments that accurately reflect each customer's requirements regardless of the substrate the design is being applied to. The team have access to the latest design software to ensure all designs can be controlled in house and communicate with our machinery to produce a carbon copy of your design. We recognise how important the detail is with branding and ensure that colours are matched to specific pantone references so that each branded garment matches your corporate identity. In addition, we can produce designs and small runs of heatseal transfers and embroidery designs in-house ensuring promotional orders or specific project work (where wearer identification is paramount) can be designed and produced in-house without a minimum order requirement. The team are also experienced in producing bespoke designs for a variety of specific orders including social & charity events and can produce full photographic quality designs in small runs to meet the most diverse of requirements.

The branding and administrations wealth of branding knowledge help ensure that we recommend the correct branding method for each and every garment you order. For embroidery, physical sew outs of each design are produced on the garments that will be used in production to ensure you obtain a design for approval that matches the finished garments you will receive. Our team are also commercially savvy and keep up-to-date with technological developments and branding processes changes to ensure we offer a range of services that are relevant and cost effective. The design and administration team work closely with the production team when trailing new technology and services to ensure any developments to our range are integrated efficiently into our process streams.