A professional towel service company allows a salon to rely on a specialist for its towels rather than needing to source and maintain towels on its own. This offers many advantages in terms of time and convenience. It also isn’t necessarily a major expense, especially when opportunity cost is considered.
Salons require a lot of towels because they are needed for everything from drying hair to cleaning up. Renting towels is an option any salon should research and consider before committing to buying and maintaining towels.
Why Do Top Salons Choose Professional Towel Services?
There are a few reasons top salons may choose professional towel services:
1. Time
Sourcing and maintaining towels takes time. Time is an important resource to consider in any business venture. Time spent in one place cannot be spent in another. This is the nature of opportunity cost. When a business makes a deal with a professional towel service, it essentially agrees to pay that company to spend its time providing and maintaining towels, so the business can spend more time focusing on its own services and profits.
2. Convenience
A professional towel service is convenient and doesn’t necessarily represent a big expense if you find the right company. It isn’t just time that these services save. It also means that a business doesn’t actually need to source towels, clean them periodically and make sure they’re maintained. Staff members can focus on their specialty, rather than on linen management.
3. Scalability
A professional towel service is going to be highly scalable, allowing a salon to quickly pivot in either direction. If the salon expands, it can talk with the towel service company and easily increase the number of towels being supplied. If a contraction occurs, the opposite is true. The salon can adjust its orders, so it receives fewer towels (and pays less as a result).
On the other hand, purchased towels aren’t a liquid asset. They typically won’t be resold, and even if they are, they are unlikely to sell for much.
Towels are cheapest when bought in bulk. For larger operations, purchasing towels might make sense. However, smaller operations may need to overcommit to buying a lot of towels, which can represent an unnecessary financial risk.
4. Quality
A company that specializes in professional towel services can provide consistent, high-quality towels that may be difficult for a salon to compete with. This only becomes more evident as a business aims for increased levels of luxury. An elite towel service company is going to have a model that won’t be easy to mimic at any sort of reasonable cost, even if a salon is operating at a similar luxury level.
5. Low Maintenance
If a business is responsible for its own towels, it’s also going to be responsible for the maintenance of those towels. They will need to be regularly laundered and, if damaged, fixed or replaced. This adds to the complexity of one’s model and leaves more room for error, which can potentially negatively impact the customer experience.
6. Customizability
Many professional towel services offer a level of customizability that would be difficult to get if providing your own towels. While a salon sourcing and maintaining its own towels can obviously source however it wishes, it is limited by the fact that it must purchase whatever towels it wants and then care for those towels. A purchase is a commitment. If a salon decides it wants a different type of towel, it must make another purchase.
This isn’t true of many professional towel services. If they offer multiple options and your business decides it might like to try another, switching out the towels is usually fairly easy. There may not even be a change in cost beyond any difference in rental fees between the options selected. This can allow for more experimentation with different types of towels and different color schemes, allowing a salon to more easily find what works for it and also switch out its towels if there is any major change to its overall aesthetic.
Specialization Leads to Mastery
It’s rare that a business can master multiple disciplines at once. If one operates a salon, that is their specialty. Most hiring decisions and the way a location is equipped will be designed to focus on maximizing the salon’s ability to operate well. By focusing on specialization, a business can more easily master its domain and stand out from its competition.
This is why it makes sense to pay other companies to handle the minor details required for a business to operate. A professional towel service company has dedicated time and resources to mastering its craft. While such a business still needs to make a profit, some of those savings can be passed to the customers while still providing excellent service.
Alsco can also provide features that salons aren’t going to be able to replicate easily. For example, our model allows for a high level of sustainability, thanks to the scale we operate at and special formulations we use.
Let Alsco Manage Your Salon’s Towels
Not every salon needs a professional towel service, but it’s something a salon should consider, especially if aiming to reach the pinnacle of quality. A towel service isn’t just convenient — it allows a salon to source towels from a dedicated, professional company that stands by the quality of the service it provides. As long as you research the company beforehand, it’s likely that you can get excellent towel service at a cost that might surprise you.
At Alsco we’ve mastered providing salons with clean, fresh, service-ready linens of all kinds, including towels. If your company needs to source towels and washcloths at an affordable rate, see how we can help you meet your needs.