Queensboro Shirt Company, an online corporate apparel company in Wilmington NC, conducted a national survey of 3,700 of its small business customers. They found that their employees regard corporate logo shirts as a status symbol of sorts, a sign of gainful employment in a rough economy. Even better, the shirts advertise employment with a small business at a time when large corporations have lost the public trust. “It used to be that I would only wear a company shirt if I had to, otherwise it would hang in my closet collecting dust,” says Nicole Volpe of Elle Hair and Spa in Raleigh, NC. “But I’m happy to have this job right now, I’m proud of where I work, and I’ll wear our shirts just about anywhere.” Queensboro claims to be the first to put a company logo on a collared shirt, twenty-eight years ago. Admittedly the survey has inherent bias: the company polled its customers who had already purchased its shirts, not a random selection of small businesses. Nevertheless, I was intrigued to read that employees would wear corporate-branded items in social settings outside of the workplace. It is a low-cost advertising option that I had not considered.