The Challenge
SAGA Cruises were building a new ship ‘Spirit of Discovery’ and required uniform for its crew of 500. This included officers, galley staff, restaurant, bars entertainment, house-keeping & hospitality. One of the main issues for SAGA was the resource required for buying from over 75 different suppliers.
Our Solution
As this was such a large and diverse undertaking, we invited SAGA to our showroom here in Christchurch to view our range of uniform. SAGA’s project lead worked from our office for over 3 weeks, utilising our extensive range of fabric swatches, catalogues and sourcing experience.
Working alongside SAGA’s interior designs as well, we needed to develop a range that could bring out the ships character whilst being functional, practical, cost-effective, and importantly, sustainable.
Some of the special fabrics, colours and styles they requested were so unique they had to be made bespoke. The balance of the initial stock requirement is now being held in stock for call-off by the SAGA team.
Man-Packs were also put together based on SAGA’s recruitment profiles and followed up by an enthusiastic on-site hand-out, size swapping and tailoring.
The Outcome
We followed SAGA’s guidelines and took inspiration from the design of the restaurants and the vessel as a whole. This provided a great base to start, and between us, we came up with some workable and functional ideas. We held a fashion showcase so SAGA could see how the garments performed and moved and how they looked within the surrounding of the ship. The garments were signed off in March and April and we delivered in July 2019. We were invited to see the uniform perform first hand and speak directly to those wearing it in the Spirit of Discovery’s final shakedown voyage.