Custom Workwear & Hi-Vis for Australian Crews

Workwear that survives the worksite — not just the photo shoot

If you run a crew, you already know the difference between gear that looks good in the catalogue and gear that's still legible after three months of concrete dust, sweat, sunscreen and the industrial wash. Branded workwear has one job: keep your people identifiable and your business in front of every client, subbie and passer-by, week in and week out, without the logo cracking off the chest by smoko on a Friday. That's a different brief from a one-off event tee, and it calls for different decisions — about garments, about decoration method, and about where the branding actually goes.

We print and embroider workwear and hi-vis for trades, construction, mining, logistics, solar & field-service crews right across Australia. The garments are chosen for the conditions, the branding method is chosen for durability and volume, and everything is produced, printed and owned here — so reorders move fast as you put on more people. Below is the practical side of getting it right.

Hi-vis branding and AS/NZS 4602.1 day/night compliance

Hi-vis isn't just a colour — for many sites it's a compliance requirement. AS/NZS 4602.1 is the Australian/New Zealand standard for high-visibility safety garments, and it splits gear into day-use (fluorescent fabric only), night-use (retroreflective tape only) and the combined day/night class that most road, rail, civil and traffic-control sites mandate. The fluorescent yellow, orange or red fabric does the work in daylight; the silver retroreflective tape — usually a hoop around the torso plus shoulder-to-waist braces, exactly as shown in the diagram above — bounces headlight and torchlight straight back to the driver at night. Toggle the day/night button in the explorer and you'll see why placement of that tape is regulated, not decorative.

The branding rule that trips people up is simple: your print can't break the reflective performance. A logo or full back print has to sit clear of the retroreflective tape and not cover so much fluorescent fabric that the garment drops out of compliance. In practice that means a left-chest logo above the hoop band, a back print that fits between the shoulders and above the upper tape, and sleeve or ABN branding placed in the clear zones. When you send us a hi-vis job, we'll lay the artwork out so it brands hard without compromising the garment's rating. If your site has a specific class requirement, tell us at quote time and we'll spec garments to match.

Why embroidery is the default for trade logos

For a company logo on a polo, work shirt, jacket or cap, embroidery is almost always the right answer for workwear — and it comes down to durability. Embroidery isn't printed onto the fabric; your logo is digitised into a stitch file and sewn into the garment with polyester thread. There's nothing to crack, peel or fade. A screen print or transfer can degrade under repeated hot, harsh washing; stitching is rated for the lifetime of the garment, which is exactly what you want on gear that gets bashed daily and laundered constantly.

Embroidery also reads as more professional, and it works on the thick, technical and textured fabrics that printing struggles with — fleece, soft-shell, ripstop, beanie ribbing. The trade-off is that embroidery isn't suited to fine gradients or photographic detail, and it gets costly on very large designs because price scales with stitch count. That's why the standard workwear formula is an embroidered logo on the left chest (and often the cap), with any larger, bolder back artwork printed. There's a one-off digitising fee to create the stitch file, and the upside is that we keep that file on record — every reorder uses the same file, so your logo is identical on the first shirt and the hundredth.

Screen printing for bulk crew runs

When you're kitting out a whole site or putting a big, bold mark across the back of a run of shirts, screen printing is the value play. The setup cost of burning a screen per colour is fixed, so the more shirts you print, the less that setup matters per piece — a 200-shirt induction order spreads the setup so thin it's almost invisible. A cured plastisol screen print is rated for 50-plus washes and bonds into the fabric rather than sitting on top, which makes it genuinely hard-wearing. For a single-colour or two-colour company name and logo across the back, on cotton or cotton-rich workwear, nothing beats it on cost at volume. Keep the colour count tight to keep setup down, and order in one batch rather than dribs and drabs so you only pay setup once.

Supacolor for hi-vis poly where standard inks won't bond

Here's the catch with a lot of hi-vis: the fluorescent fabrics are typically polyester or poly blends, and standard plastisol screen inks and some transfers don't bond reliably to them — they can crack, lift or suffer dye migration where the garment colour bleeds up through the print. This is where Supacolor transfers earn their place. Supacolor is a premium heat-transfer with ultra-fine detail and full colour that presses onto virtually anything, including hi-vis poly, nylon and technical fabrics, with a 50-plus-wash durability and no setup fee. It's also our go-to for rush deadlines — a 24-hour turnaround is possible when a new starter or a last-minute site induction can't wait. For full-colour logos on hi-vis, or mixed garment types in one order, Supacolor solves the bonding problem that catches out cheaper methods.

Logo placement that works on the tools

Where your branding goes matters as much as how it's applied. The combinations we recommend most for trade crews:

Left chest

The workhorse position — an embroidered logo roughly 8–10 cm wide. Visible across a counter, in a ute cab and on a job site, and small enough to stitch cost-effectively. This is the one position almost every workwear order includes.

Full back

Maximum visibility — your company name big enough to read from across the yard, which doubles as free advertising every time the crew is on a public job. Best screen printed (or Supacolor on hi-vis poly), placed between the shoulders and clear of any upper reflective tape.

Sleeve

A secondary spot for a trade qualification, a safety message, a sponsor or a second logo. Small, neat and out of the way of the main branding.

ABN & contact line

A small line carrying your ABN, phone or website — often along the lower back or hem. For sole traders and small operators it's a low-cost, always-on way to make the work shirt do double duty as a business card.

The reorder workflow as your crew grows

Most workwear orders aren't one-and-done. You hire, someone leaves with a shirt, a new subbie needs kitting out before Monday, sizes wear out. The thing that makes reorders painless is consistency, and that's where keeping your artwork on file pays off: your embroidery stitch file and print artwork are stored, so a top-up order of five shirts looks identical to the original 50 — same logo, same placement, same thread and ink colours. No re-digitising, no re-proofing, no “close enough.” Tell us the garment, the sizes and the quantity and we'll match the original exactly. Because we produce locally, a reorder doesn't wait on an overseas freight window — it's the difference between kitting out a new starter this week versus next month.

Garments built for Australian trade conditions

Workwear in Australia has to handle real extremes — UV that fades cheap prints, heat that demands breathable fabric, and wash cycles that punish weak decoration. We work across the full range: hi-vis polos, hi-vis work shirts, hi-vis jackets & vests, fleecy hoodies, caps & bucket hats, workwear pants. Hi-vis polos and work shirts for the daily uniform, jackets and vests for compliance and cold mornings, fleecy hoodies for the ute and smoko, caps and bucket hats for sun safety, and workwear pants to complete the kit. Whatever the garment, we'll match the decoration method to the fabric so the branding lasts as long as the gear does.

No minimum — kit out a two-person crew or a 300-strong site — so whether you're a two-person crew getting your first branded shirts or a 300-strong site doing a full rollout, the same care goes into the job. Send us your logo and your numbers and we'll come back within one business day with a quote, the right garment recommendations, and the decoration method that gives you the best durability for the money.