How Sports Clubs Buy Towels Wholesale
By The Velocity Wear Team
Club towels are quoted per job, made in runs of 50 pieces per design and produced in 10 to 15 working days from artwork approval. The cost driver for a club is rarely the towel itself. It is how many versions of the artwork the committee ends up wanting, because squad numbers and sponsor variants each turn one order into several.
What do clubs put on a bench towel?
The crest is a given. Beyond it, clubs tend to want a season, a squad number, or a sponsor mark, and each of those is a decision about how long the towel stays useful. A crest alone is usable for years and can be reordered without redrawing anything. A season year makes the towel a keepsake and a dead stock risk in equal measure.
Numbers are the expensive choice. Individually numbered towels are a different job from a single printed design, and a squad of 25 numbers is not 25 towels, it is a run that has to clear the minimum in its own right. Most clubs settle on a crest-only towel for the bench and reserve personalisation for presentation items. The weights available are listed on our towels page.
Can sponsor logos sit alongside the club crest?
Yes, and a towel is one of the easier places to do it, because there is more surface than on a shirt sleeve and nothing competing for the space. Printed branding handles a sponsor mark with several colours or fine type. Woven branding is cleaner and lasts the life of the towel, but it suits simple shapes and one or two colours rather than a detailed corporate logo.
The practical problem is the sponsor contract. If the sponsor changes at the end of a two-year deal, the towels stop being usable even though the fabric is fine. Clubs that expect sponsor churn often split the run: a crest-only batch that outlives any deal, and a smaller sponsored batch. Both still need their own 50. More on club kit generally sits on our sports clubs page.
How does a squad-sized order reach 50 pieces?
A first team squad is well short of 50, which is why club towels are almost always ordered as a club item rather than a squad item. Add the reserves, the juniors, the coaching staff and a batch to sell at the clubhouse and the number clears easily. Sizes inside the 50 are mixed freely, so a mix of bench size and full size is no obstacle.
Clubs that sell to members usually order well past the minimum, because the discount reaches up to 35% as quantity rises and the tiers step at 50 to 99, 100 to 249, 250 to 499, 500 to 999 and 1,000 plus. The same arithmetic that makes club hoodies work applies here, and we walk through it in our guide to club hoodies.
When does the order need to go in for a new season?
Count back from the first fixture, not from pre-season. Production is 10 to 15 working days from artwork approval, delivery transit sits on top, and committee approval of a crest is the step that usually slips. A club that starts in mid-summer has room for a £150 sample, credited against the bulk order, and still lands the stock before the season opens.
Clubs that leave it until the fixture list is published are relying on nothing going wrong, and something generally does: a sponsor signs late, a crest file turns out to be a low-resolution image lifted from the website, or the person with the bank details is on holiday. Six to eight weeks of lead is the comfortable amount. Our sports club towels post covers what clubs typically end up ordering.
Between seasons, think about where the spare stock lives. Clubs without a permanent clubhouse tend to leave kit in a container or a shed over winter, and towels come out of that smelling of it in a way no wash entirely fixes. Keep the surplus boxed somewhere dry and heated, ideally at a committee address rather than in the changing rooms, and count what is left in the summer so the following order starts from a real number instead of an impression.
