Trades: Ordering Towels in Bulk
By The Velocity Wear Team
Towels for a construction firm are quoted per job, ordered in runs of 50 pieces per design, and produced in 10 to 15 working days from artwork approval. Most trade orders are welfare stock for site cabins plus a handful of branded towels handed to clients and new starters. The two need different weights, and only one of them needs to look good.
Why do trades order towels at all?
Three reasons come up repeatedly. Welfare facilities on a managed site need drying provision, and branded stock is easier to keep track of than whatever gets bought locally. Firms that hand out kit to new starters find a towel is used far more than another keyring. And a builder working in a client home needs something to wipe down with that has not come off the bathroom rail in the house they are working in.
That last use is worth taking seriously. A firm that arrives with its own marked towels reads as organised, and it is a small spend against the impression it makes. The weights available are on our wholesale towels page.
What survives a van, a site and a hot wash?
Gym weight, in almost every case. It is the lightest of the gym, spa and hotel weights we supply, which means it dries in a van rather than sitting damp until Monday, and it takes a hot domestic wash without taking an hour to tumble. Heavier towels feel better and behave worse in exactly the conditions a site creates.
Colour is the other decision, and it goes against instinct. Very dark towels hide dust while they are dry and show plaster and cement dust the moment they are damp. Mid tones hide the widest range of site grime. White is only sensible where the towel is laundered commercially and bleached as a matter of course.
How should a site towel be branded?
Woven branding is the durable option because the mark is part of the towel rather than a layer on it, and site laundry is punishing. A woven border carrying the company name is legible from across a cabin and survives as long as the towel. Printed branding handles logos with fine detail, gradients or several colours, and suits the client-facing stock rather than the cabin stock.
If your branding already runs across hi-vis, fleeces and polos, keep the towel consistent with that rather than redrawing it. The decisions behind the rest of the kit are covered in our post on construction and trade workwear branding, and the trades page itself is at construction and trades.
How many should a firm order at once?
The minimum is 50 pieces per design, with sizes mixed freely inside it. For a firm with two or three active sites that is usually a year of stock, and the discount makes it worth going further: up to 35% off the 50-piece price as quantity rises, with tiers at 50 to 99, 100 to 249, 250 to 499, 500 to 999 and 1,000 plus.
Towels do not date the way printed workwear does, because a towel rarely carries a year or a project name. A single large order held in the stores is a reasonable way to buy them, provided the artwork on it is the company mark rather than anything tied to a particular contract. A £150 sample, credited against the bulk order, is worth taking first if the towel is going in front of clients.
One habit saves money across a whole firm: put towels on the same ordering cycle as the rest of the site consumables rather than treating them as a separate decision. Gloves, wipes and cleaning stock already run on a schedule that somebody owns, and a towel line slotted into that schedule gets counted and reordered by the person whose job that is. Handled as a one-off, it gets bought when a foreman notices the cabin has run out, which is always the worst moment to be buying anything.
