Very few aged care groups come to us because they want to look smarter. They come because somebody starts most weeks and the uniform never keeps up. The question underneath is not what the garments look like — it is whether a new carer has something to wear on their first shift instead of their second week.

This comes up more in aged care than in any other sector we supply. A resident’s family visiting for the first time cannot tell a registered nurse from a carer from a cleaner, and they are trying to work out who to ask. Groups that split colour by role tell us it solved a problem they had stopped noticing they had.

The fear is almost never cost. It is a home running out of uniforms halfway through a switchover because the old supply stopped before the new one landed. It is why we stage group changeovers site by site rather than switching everyone at once, and why fit kits go out before any bulk order is placed.

Most people expect sizing to be the hard bit, and it rarely is — a fit kit goes round a home for a week and everyone picks their own. What takes longer is getting agreement on what the group wears, particularly where homes have had their own way of doing it for years.

When we ask what changed, the answer is usually not about appearance. It is that a new starter is ordered against sizes already held, a reorder matches the original run because the embroidery file has not moved, and nobody has to work out who to ring.