There is a question I get asked fairly regularly by procurement managers and HR professionals who are putting together a corporate identity package for the first time: what exactly is the difference between company ties and custom ties? And I always enjoy answering it, because the honest answer is that company ties are simply one expression of a much broader and more interesting world. Think of it this way — custom ties are the umbrella, and company ties sit comfortably underneath it, along with school ties, club ties, regimental ties, and a dozen other categories that most people never even consider until they need one.

The concept of a tie that says something specific about the wearer has been around far longer than most people realise. Back in the day, when Croatian mercenaries arrived in France during the Thirty Years' War, their distinctive knotted custom ties caught the eye of King Louis XIII, who adopted it as a fashionable accessory almost immediately. From there, what we now call the necktie evolved through British military tradition, through the rigid uniform codes of public schools in England, and eventually into the corporate dress codes that defined business culture through much of the twentieth century. South Africa followed a similar trajectory, with school ties becoming deeply embedded in our educational culture, and corporate ties emerging as organisations began to understand the power of a unified visual identity. By the time the 1970s and 1980s rolled around, well-designed custom ties had become shorthand for institutional belonging — whether you were a schoolboy, a bank teller, or a sales representative for a major brand.

What I would say to anyone approaching this for the first time is that the distinction between company ties and custom ties is really just a matter of purpose and application. Custom ties, broadly speaking, are any ties that have been designed and manufactured to a specific brief — a particular colour combination, a logo, a pattern, a weave structure that exists nowhere else in the world. Company ties happen to be custom ties that serve a corporate identity function. They carry a company's colours, perhaps a subtle woven logo, or a repeating motif drawn from the brand's visual language. But the process of making them, the decisions involved, the materials selected — all of that falls squarely within the world of custom ties. Don't get me wrong, there are nuances in how you approach a corporate brief versus, say, a school tie order, but the craft and manufacturing process are fundamentally the same.

At Vinuchi, we produce custom ties across all of these categories, and one of the things I find genuinely rewarding is working through a brief with a client who has never done this before. These days, many companies come to us with a vague idea — they know they want something that looks professional and reflects the brand — but they haven't yet thought about whether they want a printed tie or a woven tie, whether the background should be a solid colour or a textured jacquard, or how a small logo translates into a repeating tie pattern. These are the conversations that I find most valuable, because the answers shape everything that follows in the manufacturing process.

The printed versus woven question alone deserves a proper discussion. Printed ties allow for more photographic detail and colour gradients, while woven ties — which are produced on jacquard looms and have the design built into the fabric itself — carry a quality and weight that most people can sense immediately, even if they can't quite articulate why. For company ties that are meant to represent a prestigious brand, I would almost always lean toward woven. The longevity is better, the hand-feel is superior, and there is something about a woven tie that communicates permanence and seriousness in a way that a printed tie simply cannot replicate.

One could say that the entire history of the necktie is really the history of custom ties — because from the very beginning, these were garments made to signal identity, allegiance, and belonging. That function has never disappeared. What has changed is the range of organisations that now understand the value of a well-made tie as part of a coherent identity system. Schools have known this for generations. Corporates took a little longer to catch on. These days, we see sports clubs, professional associations, government departments, and family businesses all recognising that custom ties are not a relic of a more formal era, but rather a considered and lasting way to put your identity into the world.