They probably don't know it, but staff at the Swedish parliament, two Russian airlines, several Danish car showrooms and any number of Irish hotels share a Wexford connection.
All wear uniforms designed and manufactured by a small but ambitious Wexford company that must be giving some local bankers nightmares about the one that got away.
Acorn Fashions is run by clothing design technician Jim Wallace, who was forced to try an unorthodox approach to get the company going 10 years ago.
"I had severe trouble just getting a bank account opened," he says with a smile. "I spent a lot of time and energy going from bank to bank with written-out proposals, cash flows and three-year projections, and the first three turned me down.
"So I went into the next one and said: `I don't have anything prepared, I don't have anything ready and I've nothing to give you but I want a bank account' and they said: `Yes.' "
Starting with a single employee in a premises at the back of the well-known tailor's shop run in Wexford by his late father James, Mr Wallace met his first contract - to supply uniforms for security staff at Telecom Eireann.
From there, it was a case of "knocking on doors, the shoe leather on the street. That's really how you build your business. You have to focus on who you're going to sell to. I was lucky to get established with a couple of supermarket chains; I do the local supermarket here, Pettit's. We also did Spar and we did a uniform for Bewley's.
"Getting those kinds of customer was probably a keystone to establishing the company and getting it to grow."
Having graduated in Leeds and worked in the trade in England, Jim began making uniforms after a difficult spell in the family fashion business, where he worked with his brother Nick, the leading designer.
"I started up the uniform business mainly because the high class fashion business wasn't profitable. It was very difficult to manage."
And while Acorn Fashions is now a thriving export business operating from a newly-built factory in the Whitemill Industrial Estate with a staff of 48, in those early days it concentrated entirely on the home market.
"I'd been in the export market and I'd really got my fingers burned so I wasn't interested in going back into it. The view I took was, if I had a customer around the corner who wasn't paying me I could go around and see him. In the previous [family-owned fashion] company, I remember going to Manhattan for a day purely to try and secure money. I didn't want that experience again."
But as the company grew, acquiring a diverse range of clients including AIB, the Fitzpatrick and Jurys hotel groups and even the Army, Jim began to broaden his horizons.
He moved to a 3,000 square-foot premises, also at Whitemill Industrial Estate but less than half the size of the new factory, and five years ago introduced a "quick response system" which means an order received today can be delivered tomorrow.
Such a system obviously puts pressure on the company's 30-odd machinists, and Jim is the first to admit the clothing industry is "not renowned for its employment conditions".
But with Acorn established in the home market, where it has become the biggest supplier of uniforms to the catering sector, Jim began to look again at export markets about four years ago.
He established contacts in northern European countries such as Holland, Denmark and Sweden, where labour costs are higher than in Ireland. "There's no point in trying to sell to Spain, and almost every other building in Italy is a clothing factory."
A Swedish-based agent helped him to secure a five-year contract to supply staff uniforms at the Swedish parliament. Another contact in Russia secured contracts for the pilots' uniforms at two independent airlines.
The only problem caused by exporting from Wexford is the extra distance involved for clients who visit. "If I'm in Dublin, a customer coming to visit has to spend one day; if I'm in Wexford, it's two. But I would prefer not to live and work in Dublin. I like the sense of belonging in Wexford. You have a close circle of contacts and people are very willing to help you.
"It's nice to be close to the country, to be able to get into the car, drive for 10 or 15 minutes and arrive on Curracloe beach. Look up one way and you'll see three people. Look the other way and there's nobody. It's a nice feeling."