Corporate ties are no longer what they were, the biggest reason obviously being the dress down code of the majority of companies, they simply don’t care whether their staff wear ties or not- in fact, since covid, the plight of the corporate tie has become even more affected because of the work from home situation.

In fact, I can probably safely say that the less commercial space occupied, the less corporate ties will be worn, I guess that does stand to reason as who in their right minds would wear a corporate tie at home!!!

However, its not all doom and gloom, it seems almost that the traditional uniform tie is replacing corporate ties, it certainly could be maintained that any tie worn with a company logo can be deemed to be a corporate tie.

Back in the days when corporate ties were a big thing, they were fashionable and almost competed for- many companies who did corporate ties found that their corporate ties were often in high demand by potential wearers, a classic case of this would have been Standard Bank Cricket ties or SAB rugby ties, everybody wanted those types of corporate ties because they were almost a collector’s item.

In fact, many was the time when we were asked to number the ties in sequence on a limited basis so corporate ties had then become a collectors item with a limited handout, so in other words the corporate ties were now prized collectors items that hung from the pub roof in a person house or were wrapped around a rugby ball as were my collectors ties- especially in the early days of professional rugby when the advent of the sports tie, especially those corporate ties that could be deemed fashion corporate ties were becoming really popular.

So instead of the corporate ties having stripes with logos for example, they may have had the figure of a player within the tie in full flight, about to make a try- wow! I still remember our first tie with those types of graphics, we introduced it at the end of the 1995 RWC to celebrate South Africa’s historic win and the rise of people like Francois Pienaar to stardom.

However, I am digressing from corporate ties somewhat as those could be deemed more as sports ties which by the way are still extremely popular and often very much in demand. Especially when the recipient has a connection to the reason why the sports ties were made in the first place.

So back to corporate ties and the reason why corporate ties are still so important.

The fact is that corporate ties are still deemed to be a really good hand out from a marketing perspective, corporate ties still hold a measure of respect and without a shadow of a doubt, the space corporate ties still occupy in this realm is still significant depending of course on which level of business on occupies. Corporate ties would certainly not be deemed important in the world of person who tends to work more manually with their hands as opposed to an office bound or higher level executive who will perhaps understand and accept the role of corporate ties more readily as they know the value that good, well designed corporate ties have in the market place both as an item wearable with a value aswell as one that brings a level of recognition, to say- “I am part of this club”.