Towels for Hotels: reordering
By The Velocity Wear Team
Hotels reorder towels in a rolling pattern rather than replacing a whole estate at once, which makes matching the harder problem. Hold your original job reference, keep one unwashed towel from the first delivery sealed away as a physical reference, and place each top-up before the oldest rotation set drops below standard. The minimum stays at fifty pieces of one design.
How do you keep a second hotel run matching the first?
By removing every variable you can and managing the one you cannot. The removable variables are specification: weight, dimensions, branding method and placement, all of which sit in the record attached to your previous job reference. Quoting that reference is faster and more accurate than describing the towel again, and it eliminates the small drifts that creep in when a specification is rebuilt from memory.
The variable that remains is the dye lot. Cotton dyed in separate batches can finish a shade apart, and matching against a sealed reference towel is how you keep that gap small. Matching against a towel that has already been through two years of industrial laundry does not work, because you would be matching the faded version rather than the original. Specification detail sits on our wholesale towels page.
What stock level should trigger a reorder?
Work from rotation sets rather than piece counts. When one full set has worn to the point where you would not put it in your best room, that set is functionally retired even if it is still physically present, and that is your trigger. You then have the remaining sets covering you while the replacement is produced over 10 to 15 working days and shipped.
Properties that wait until a set is genuinely unusable end up buying in a hurry, which usually means a smaller order at a worse quantity band. Ordering at the retirement point rather than the failure point lets you consolidate top-ups into fewer, larger runs, and the quantity ladder rewards that directly. The general principle is covered in when to reorder and how much buffer to hold.
Can you add a new format to an existing programme?
Yes, and it is one of the easier changes to make. If the new format carries the same branding in the same colour as your existing stock, it is the same design and slots into the programme without a new setup. Adding a bath sheet to a range that already runs bath, hand and face is usually straightforward for exactly that reason.
What is not straightforward is adding a new colour. That is a separate design with its own fifty-piece floor, and it also introduces two shades into a property that previously had one. If the intention is a distinct pool or spa towel, that separation is deliberate and welcome. If it is an attempt to refresh the room linen, plan to replace rather than to mix.
How often should the whole estate be refreshed?
There is no universal interval, because it depends entirely on your laundry process, your occupancy and the weight you bought. What works is measuring rather than guessing: date one set when it enters service, watch when it reaches retirement, and use that observed interval as the planning figure for everything that follows. After two cycles you will have a schedule that fits your property rather than a generic one.
Building that rhythm into a calendar, rather than reacting to it, is what stops restocking from being an emergency. There is a broader version of the argument in reordering stock and the rhythm that gets a brand to year two.
