Ordering Towels for Tour Season
By The Velocity Wear Team
Tour towels want ordering six to eight weeks before the first date. Production runs 10 to 15 working days from artwork approval, and the quote, the artwork round, the sample and the freight all sit outside that window. Towels are quoted per job rather than sold from a published list price, so start with a quote and work the calendar backwards from load-in.
When does the order have to be placed?
Count backwards from load-in for the first show, not from the announcement. The build itself is 10 to 15 working days from the moment artwork is signed off. Ahead of that sit the quote and the artwork round, plus the £150 sample if you want one, which is credited against the bulk order. Behind it sits transit to wherever the merch is being consolidated. Six weeks is comfortable. Four is tight but workable when the artwork is already final.
Tour merch has a deadline that retail stock does not. A shirt that lands a fortnight late can still sell next month. A towel printed with a date list is worth very little once the run is over. Our wholesale towels page sets out the weights and the branding methods, and the wider timeline behind any bulk apparel job is broken down in apparel production lead times explained.
Which towel weight travels well on tour?
Three broad weights get ordered: a lighter gym towel, a middleweight spa towel and a heavier hotel towel. For touring stock the lighter gym weight usually wins. It packs flat, it dries overnight in a van, and it keeps the carton count down when the merch travels with the production rather than shipping ahead. The heavier weights feel better in the hand and sit better on a stall as the premium item, but they eat space.
Towel weight is quoted in GSM. It is a real and standard specification, but no figure is published on this site, so ask for the number to be written into your quote in writing. That way the towel you approved at sample stage is the towel that arrives on the pallet, and you have something to point at if it is not.
How do you brand a tour towel so it survives the run?
Branding is either woven into the cloth or printed onto it. Woven is part of the towel, so there is nothing to crack or lift, and it reads as a product rather than a handout. Printed branding carries fine detail, photographic artwork and a list of dates that weaving cannot hold. Plenty of tours end up running both: a woven mark on the plain stock and a printed design on the dated piece.
If the towel carries dates, treat it as stock with an expiry. Order the dated version tight and the undated version deep, because the undated one keeps selling through the webstore for months after the last encore.
What happens if the tour dates move?
Dates move, supports drop out and venues get swapped. That is the argument for keeping the dated print to a single design at a modest quantity. Every design carries its own 50-piece minimum, so a dated towel and a plain towel are two runs of 50, not one run of 100 split down the middle. Sizes and colours can be mixed inside each 50 as long as the artwork stays identical.
Take the sample if the towel is going on a stall next to a hoodie at three times the price, because a buyer who handles one will judge the whole table by it. Order a sample before the artwork is locked rather than after, and remember the £150 is credited against the bulk order, so on a job you were placing anyway it costs time rather than money. The same counting exercise for exhibition stock is in ordering towels for trade show season.
