The uniforms are horrible. I wear it and to tell you the truth, the men's options are designed for a larger person (ie. the stretch comfort waistband, polyspandex fabric, high rise waist that makes it possible to pull them up to my chest). In order for me to get mine to fit properly and comfortably I had to spend over $100.00 on 4 pairs of pants for tailoring that the company would not pay for because it wasn't within the guidelines of re-imbursement. As far as the far too casual look the people at Anet are speaking of, I do not wear a necktie when I am working 4-5 legs per day on a 737 in the middle of summer when the jetway A/C doesn't work and the pilots won't turn on the APU until 10 minutes prior to departure. It's very hard to make the uniform look professional but it is possible.
TELL ME something N-e-w!? There is a saying "You only get ONE Chance to Make a first Impression". This uniform for the most part SUCKS B-i-g Time. Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay Too Casual. Many people wearing uniforms 'sized' for what they could have worn 10 years ago or maybe hoping to reduce Down to. Muffin Tops?.........hmnn, more like the batter of a layer cake poured into a Loaf pan. It is downright embarassing. There are some pieces that work but low rider pants on 30-40-50-60-70's (yes, survey says) do NOT look so appealing and most people cannot pull it off. The Track Suits? Send them out To Space. The skort........God Help Us. And let's not forget the Blue Smurf Dress improperly sized that makes Miss Piggy look like the Michelin Tire Man's Sister. Oh, I am sure I will offend or shall we say Downright PO some of the people but "I call It Like I see It". Let's not forget "If it looks like a Duck, quacks like a Duck and 'waddles' like a duck........I can pretty much assure You...........it's a GD Duck!". (Or I am sure someone might want to believe it is Natalie Portman playing a new role ). I am Not about sugar coating some of the BS and flat out nonsense that WE All witness and experience. I couldn't care less about being Politically Correct either..........some people need to Called Out occassionally and it starts from The Top as well. Year's ago they sponsored "IMAGE Fair's for Employees. Now they need a Complete Makeover. And unfortunately there are a few Too Many that simply wouldn't make the Cut.
There were way too many cooks in the kitchen on the uniform decisions. Let’s see there were FAs from east & west operations on the uniform committee, CSRs from east and west stations – cold stations, hot stations, tropical stations ¬– from their uniform committees, union reps, Marketing, Uniform Distribution, Purchasing, Finance, Inflight Management, Station Management, Directors, VPs, and just about anyone else who spoke up loudly about getting what they wanted out of the new uniforms. Option number one of using readily-available uniform components from uniform companies was rejected in favor of using a NY designer to create custom pieces to fit an image for the new “brand” at US. Once designed, every piece of the uniform collection put into production as customized pieces, never worn or tested by anyone previous to the rollout. All of this was done in an attempt to gain consensus from all of the above parties which lead to way too many options and styles that didn’t work well for everyone. Uniforms that look good on twenty-somethings weighing in at 110Lbs doesn’t guarantee that they will also look good on those who are at the opposite end of those descriptions, and they don’t.
US wasn't the launch customer on the kiosks or Shares, and EDS had completed multiple res migrations prior to HP/US. Didn't the website have a beta online running parallel with the legacy site for several months prior to a final cutover? I think you are reaching for an equivalency that isn’t there. None of those projects were saddled with far too many decision makers like the above-wing uniform program was.
I’m saying that this program wasn’t successful because there were too many opinions on both the labor and management side. On the management side their first issue was to let Marketing drive the bus and charged them with trying to get consensus from employees who were threatening grievances and generally throwing juvenile tantrums over uniform pieces, fabrics, colors, and what have you. This led to the hiring of Stan Herman and ultimately Twin Hill to produce an entire catalog of custom uniform pieces that simply didn’t need to be customized and designed as if US Airways has different requirements than every other airline in America in terms of outfitting FAs & CSRs.
I agree with most all of your post except that Twin Hill did not offer the lowest cost alternative. They were the only company willing to covert all of Stan Herman's designs into custom uniform pieces. The program is not where it is today because there wasn't enough money spent. The whole concept of customized uniforms which meet every employee's whims is the root cause of the problem.
The name you are looking for is Karen from Marketing.
