Wholesale Towels for Grooming: Matching Weight to Coat Type

QINGDAO, China — A wholesale towel order for a grooming business is normally written as one line: towels, one size, one weight. That line is correct for exactly one coat type. A shop running double coats, drop coats, curly coats and smooth coats in the same afternoon is drying four different water loads with one specification, and the staff compensate by using more pieces.

Coat type is the specification

The water a coat holds is not proportional to the size of the dog. A small dog with a dense double coat can carry more water than a large dog with a short single coat, and it releases that water far more slowly. A towel that works on a smooth coat by blotting has to be squeezed, wrung and reapplied on a double coat, which is where most of the towel consumption in a salon actually occurs.

Curly and wool coats behave differently again. They are not dried by absorption alone; the towel is used to press the coat against the skin and lift the curl off the body, and a thin towel simply rolls up in the hand. Drop coats and long silky coats need a towel that releases hair, because a towel that holds coat in its surface turns a ten-minute dry into a brushing job.

So the purchasing question is not which towel is best. It is which two or three behaviours the shop needs on the table at the same time, and what each one costs to hold in stock.

What each weight band does on a wet dog

The 40–130 g/m² range covers the working span for grooming. At the light end a towel is fast to handle, easy to fold into a small pad for faces and paws, and cheap enough to use once on a muddy dog and bin. It is a poor choice for a full-body squeeze on a heavy coat, because the fabric saturates and stops moving water.

At the heavy end the towel keeps its body when wet, holds the squeeze long enough for the water to transfer, and can be rolled and pressed without tearing. That is the piece a groomer reaches for on a double coat or a large curly dog, and it is the piece that gets reused within the same appointment on the same animal.

Wet strength is the specification line most often left out. A towel that tears under a squeeze puts fibre into the coat, and fibre in the coat is a rework cost: the dog goes back on the table, the dryer runs longer, and the client sees the groomer picking at the finished dog. Low-lint behaviour in our mill experience comes from the fibre blend and the bonding, not from the weight alone, so the two have to be specified together.

Size follows the same logic rather than the breed chart. One size in the 30 or 40 × 60–100 cm band covers most of the table, with a smaller format for faces, paws and cats. Two sizes and two weights is usually the whole range a single shop needs.

The mixed carton as the purchasing unit

Here the arithmetic bites. The standard minimum is 40,000 pieces per SKU, and a shop that wants four coat behaviours in two sizes is asking for eight SKUs, which is a warehouse, not a stockroom. This is why grooming orders tend to collapse back to one weight: not because it is right, but because the alternative multiplies the commitment.

The way out is to treat the carton, not the towel, as the unit. A mixed carton carrying two weights in one size, separated by colour, gives a shop the two behaviours that matter most with a single commitment. Colour is doing the purchasing work here: a mid-grey for the general drying towel and a darker tone for the piece used on the table and around the face keeps the two from migrating into each other's job.

For a distributor the logic inverts. A distributor's customer is not one shop but forty, and the mixed pallet is how a single order covers a territory: the heavy weight for the double-coat specialists, the light weight for the small-breed and cat work, the dark tone for the shops that ask for it. The minimum then sits on the pallet rather than on each line, and the resale price per pack is set from the mix rather than from a single unit cost.

Reading the demand behind the order

Grooming volume is growing, and it is growing at the table rather than at the towel. US pet grooming services were worth $2.06 billion in 2024 and are forecast at $2.99 billion by 2030, a compound annual growth rate of 6.7 percent [1]. Total US pet spending reached $158 billion in 2025 and is forecast at $165 billion for 2026, with other services including grooming at $14.3 billion [2].

For a supplier or a private label buyer, that growth shows up as more tables, not as more towels per dog. A forecast built on towel-per-animal assumptions will under-run; a forecast built on new shop openings and added tables will track. The same distinction decides whether a second weight is a range extension or dead stock.

How Jaroll builds a grooming towel range

Jaroll runs a 3,000 m² plant with 28 people, founded in 2018, and makes pet grooming towels on the same spunlace lines as the rest of the range, in viscose, viscose-polyester, cotton and wood pulp blends, plain or pearl.

The useful brief from a buyer is the coat mix, not the towel count: which breeds the table sees in a week, which of them are dried twice, and whether the towel is used to blot or to squeeze. That resolves into a weight per behaviour and a colour per use, and it usually lands on two weights rather than four.

The standard minimum stays at 40,000 pieces per SKU and lead time at usually about 20 working days from deposit and artwork approval, so a first range can be built as a mixed carton with two weights and one size rather than as a full ladder of SKUs. Samples should be tested wet, on a coated dog, by the person who will use them.

Sources

1. Grand View Research, 2025-06-01. US Pet Grooming Services Market. https://www.earthwisepetfranchise.com/market/
2. American Pet Products Association, 2026-03-01. APPA 2026 State of the Industry Report. https://www.earthwisepetfranchise.com/market/