Multi Club Towel Ordering for Fitness Chains: One Order, Several Formats

QINGDAO, China — Multi club towel ordering looks like a volume question and turns into a format question. A chain signs one blanket agreement, then discovers that the club with a recovery studio, the club with a pool and the club that is only a floor of racks need three different answers from the same supplier. The order is one. The specification is not.

This autumn is a good moment to write that specification down. Retail research from Newmark found that among the largest chains it tracks, gyms and fitness centers recorded no major closings this year, keeping millions of square feet of retail space in use, and that health and beauty has been the fastest expanding segment it measures [1]. Equinox, meanwhile, is accelerating expansion behind a refinancing that puts more than a billion dollars into the business, with a pipeline of roughly fifty new clubs [2]. Expansion is a purchasing event, and it arrives as a date.

Why the order book moves before the equipment does

A new club needs towels before it needs members. The first delivery has to land while the fit-out crew is still on site, because a towel order placed after the opening week arrives into a club that is already improvising with whatever the neighbouring site can spare. Chains that expand in clusters feel this hardest: several openings in one quarter turn a routine replenishment into a project with its own calendar.

The format question then arrives with the building. Newmark describes a format it calls the super-boutique, a single club combining strength, cardio, group fitness and recovery under one roof, and points to operators pairing fitness with recovery, spa and food in the same development [1]. One address, several rooms, and each room puts a different demand on a cloth.

One club is now several rooms

That is the part a central buyer cannot see from a spreadsheet. A room of racks and a room of mats use a towel differently. So does a recovery studio, where a client lies down, and a pool deck, where the towel is doing the work of a bath sheet rather than a hand towel. A single specification pushed to every room either over-specifies the gym floor or under-specifies the pool.

The practical split is by format, not by brand. Jaroll's towel line runs 40 × 80 cm at 40–130 g/m² for floor and studio use, and a larger bath format at 60–80 × 100–160 cm for pool decks and showers. Two formats cover the four rooms, and the chain keeps one supplier and one artwork approval instead of one per room.

What one order has to carry across sites

In multi club towel ordering, volume is the easy part and discipline is the hard part. Jaroll's minimum is 40,000 pieces per SKU, and that figure applies to an order line, not to a club. A five-club opening with two formats and two colors is therefore four order lines, and the arithmetic is worth doing before the agreement is signed rather than after the first invoice.

• Fix the SKU list at chain level. Format, weight band and color per SKU, so a club cannot order its own variant and split the volume.
• Decide which rooms share a format. Two formats across four room types is manageable in a store room; four formats is a stock problem at every site.
• Keep the label identical across clubs. A private label programme that changes the print per region turns one artwork approval into several.
• Write the reorder trigger. A club that reorders when the shelf looks low will reorder in the week before a bank holiday, which is the week a factory cannot move.

Opening dates beat averages

Central teams forecast in averages and open in dates. A club opening in the last week of a quarter needs the first delivery two to three weeks earlier, which is where the production calendar becomes the constraint rather than the price. Jaroll quotes usually about 20 working days from deposit and artwork approval, so a chain planning several openings in one quarter should place the artwork approval before the property handover, not after it.

Then check how the delivery arrives at a site that has no store room yet. Cartons labelled by club, by format and by room save a site manager an afternoon of sorting on a day when nobody has an afternoon. Ask for that labelling in the order, and ask what the carton says when the receiving person is a contractor rather than an employee.

What Jaroll can do

Jaroll makes gym towels for chains that buy by format rather than by club, in 40 × 80 cm at 40–130 g/m² for training floors and studios, and in a 60–80 × 100–160 cm bath format for pool and shower areas. Color, pack and label are set per SKU, and the minimum is 40,000 pieces per SKU, which is why a chain should fix its SKU list before it fixes its opening calendar.

Three questions are worth asking before a multi club program is quoted. Ask how a part delivery is scheduled when three clubs open in the same month, because a supplier who can only ship complete orders will move the problem to the site. Ask whether the pack size can differ by room while the towel stays the same, since a pool deck and a studio do not restock at the same rate. And ask what the carton is labelled with, because at a new site the person receiving it may never have seen the product before. Jaroll answers those before a quote is issued, and with capacity at approximately 50 million towels per month, a chain adding clubs is a scheduling question rather than a capacity one.

Sources

1. Athletech News, 2026-11-04. Fitness Chains Are Now 'Sought-After' Retail Tenants, Report Says. https://athletechnews.com/fitness-chains-are-now-sought-after-retail-tenants-newmark-report/
2. Leisure Opportunities, 2026-11-03. Equinox appoints Brendan Whitworth as CEO. Harvey Spevak moves to be chair. http://www.leisureopportunities.co.uk/facebookNEWS.cfm?codeID=363918