Ordering Towels for Trade Show Season
By The Velocity Wear Team
Aim to have exhibition towels in your own store a full week before the stand goes up, which means placing the order around five to seven weeks out. The build is 10 to 15 working days from artwork approval; the quote, the artwork round and transit sit on top. Towels are priced per job, so the first step is a quote against a real quantity.
How far ahead of the stand build should you order?
Work to a delivery date a week before the show rather than the show itself. Stands get built the day before, courier slots go missing in exhibition week, and a pallet addressed to a venue loading bay is the single most common way branded stock disappears. Take delivery at your office, open a carton, then move the stock yourself.
That week of slack costs nothing at the ordering stage and buys you the only useful insurance there is. Behind it, the 10 to 15 working day production window is fixed from artwork approval, so the variable you control is how early the artwork is finished. The wholesale towels page covers the weights and the branding methods available.
Which size works as a giveaway on a stand?
Smaller is better on a stand. A gym-sized towel folds down small enough to hand across a counter and to fit in the bag a visitor is already carrying, and it keeps your own carton count sane when you are paying for stand storage by the square metre. Bath-sheet sizes are a prize draw item, not a giveaway item.
Quantity follows the same logic. Count the qualified conversations you expect across the three days rather than the footfall figure the organiser published, because a towel is a reward for a real exchange rather than something to press on everybody who walks past. Ordering to footfall is how a company ends up storing eleven cartons until next spring. If you genuinely cannot forecast it, order for the smaller number and keep a second show in the diary to absorb whatever is left over.
Weight matters less here than it does in a locker room, because an exhibition towel is judged in the hand for about four seconds. A lighter gym weight is the sensible default. If the towel is going to a short list of named accounts rather than to passing traffic, step up to the spa or hotel weight and get the figure recorded on the quote.
Woven or printed branding for exhibition stock?
Woven branding is worked into the cloth and survives anything the towel survives, which suits a piece you want kept rather than used once. Printed branding handles detail, gradients and a stand number or campaign line. For a show, printing usually wins on cost and on flexibility, since the artwork can carry more than a logo.
Resist putting the show name and year on the towel unless you are sure the stock will clear. Undated branding travels to the next three shows. Dated branding becomes a cupboard problem in November. The same reasoning applies to corporate gifting, which is covered in branded towels as corporate gifts.
What do you do with the towels left in the crate?
Order for the shows you have booked, not the shows you might book. The minimum is 50 pieces per design and the discount rises to a ceiling of 35 per cent as quantity grows, which tempts buyers into a deeper run than the calendar justifies. A towel that sits in a crate for two years earns nothing, whatever the unit price said.
If there is surplus, it has a second life as staff kit, as a thank-you to the accounts that visited, or as the prize in a follow-up campaign. Take the £150 sample first so you know what you are committing to; it is credited against the bulk order. Order a sample at the same time as you finalise the quantity, and if the towels are also going on tour dates, the deadline maths is in ordering towels for tour season.
