Second generation, and still making our own.
One family, one trade, and mostly one building since 1991. The point of that is not sentiment: on the garments we make, the pattern, the fabric and the make are ours, so there is nobody else for us to blame. On the ranges we buy in and badge, we say so.
How we got here.
Four dates that decided what this company does. The years between them are the argument: nothing here was bought, rebranded or rolled up.
- 1979
Ys Clothing Company
A ladies retail outlet in Brisbane. A local school asked whether we could run its uniform. We could, and the range grew from there to socks, hats and shoes for the schools that followed.
- 1991
Ross Street, Newstead
Bought the building — head office, design studio, pattern room and production floor — and we are still in it. The embroidery machines are three minutes from the desk where the garment was drawn.
- 1998
Past the south east
A retail outlet and distribution centre opened in Rockhampton, the first time the business worked outside south-east Queensland. Regional supply has been part of the job ever since.
- Since
The shop on the campus
We took the uniform shop onto the school's own grounds and staffed it ourselves. It committed us to the garment for its whole life — sold, worn, complained about and replaced by us — which is why, when a seam fails, there is no supplier for us to point at.
- Years in Australian manufacturing
- 47Years in Australian manufacturing
- Schools supplied across Australia
- 300Schools supplied across Australia
Create, direct, deliver — and make for other people.
Four things this company actually does. The first three are the sequence any order runs through; the fourth is what the same plant does when the label on the garment is somebody else's.
Create
Our own designers and pattern makers take a garment from fabric selection to a signed-off sample in the studio at Newstead. Fit is drafted in our own pattern room and proven across a real size run rather than adopted from a supplier's block, so the range is settled before anything is cut at volume.
Direct
Of the garments we manufacture, two factories are ours outright — Vietnam and China — and the balance runs at plants working to our patterns. Directing production rather than ordering from a catalogue is what makes a fit revision a decision instead of a negotiation. The stocked brands we distribute are somebody else's make entirely, and are covered separately.
Deliver
If you cannot store what we make for you, we hold it, pick it, pack it and send it out against your orders. At the far end of that are the counters people actually buy over — our own retail shops, and the managed shops on school campuses that we staff and stock.
Make for other brands
Our own facility in Vietnam also runs white-label work. A brand with a design and no appetite for an offshore operation of its own can manufacture through ours, under its own label, and deal with a Brisbane office rather than a factory in another time zone.
Ethical manufacturing, stated plainly.
Garment manufacturing has a poor record globally and a badge on a website does not change that. Here is what we hold, in the words we can stand behind.
- 01
Most of it we run
70% of our manufacturing volume comes out of facilities we own, manage, or that work exclusively for us — vertically integrated, so the conditions are ours to set rather than ours to request.
- 02
Conditions and pay
A safe working environment and above minimum wage for the people making the garments. Child labour, discrimination and unsafe conditions are the things we check for, in our own plants first.
- 03
The rest, said out loud
Not every garment comes from a factory we control, and a Brisbane address is not allowed to imply that it does. Ask about any style and we will tell you where it is made and who made it.
- Second-generation family business, trading since 1979
- Head office, design studio and pattern room at Newstead, Brisbane
- Two factories owned outright, in Vietnam and China
Comparing suppliers?
Send the shortlist you are working from, or just the thing your current uniform keeps getting wrong. We will be straight with you about what we can and cannot do.
Prefer to talk? (07) 3253 3100