The Pet Grooming Towel Specification That Survives the Handover

QINGDAO, China — A pet grooming towel specification is usually written by someone who will never stand at the grooming table, and carried out by someone who will never read a specification sheet. Most of the distance between a first order and a repeat order sits in that gap. Two announcements in the last week of October described where pet spending is decided rather than what it is spent on: Tractor Supply reported third-quarter net sales up 5.1 percent to $3.91 billion and said it is expanding digital and pet services [1], while zooplus opened a marketplace in Spain with 10,000 products and now runs marketplaces in three European countries [2]. Neither mentions towels. Both describe a buyer sitting further from the animal than the person using the product.

The Buyer and the Groomer Are Answering Different Questions

A groomer asks whether a towel works at the table: does it cover the wet part, does it hold together when pulled, can it go in the bin without a second look. A category buyer asks a different set: material family, weight band, size envelope, pack, minimum. Neither set is wrong. They are answered by different people, and a pet grooming towel specification is the only document that has to hold both.

Consolidation makes that handover routine. When a grooming service sits inside a retail chain, or a brand reaches customers through a marketplace listing rather than a sales rep, the person signing the order has often never handled the product on a wet dog [1][2]. This suggests the sheet now does work a sales visit used to do, and a specification written as a list of options produces a first order that is correct on paper and wrong in the room.

Write it so a reader who has never seen the animal can act on it, then ask a groomer to cross out the lines they would not use.

Start With the Stage, Not the Animal's Weight

Weight is the number buyers reach for first and the least useful one. A big short-coated dog and a small dense-coated one need different amounts of drying, and both may be handled with the same size of towel. What varies across a working day is the stage.

• Preparation, before water: a small dry towel for handling, muzzle wiping and table cleanup. Count matters here, size does not.
• Washing: the towel is wet almost at once, so it has to survive being wrung or discarded, not absorbed into.
• Towel drying: the stage that sets the pack weight, and the one where the size envelope has to be right.
• Finishing and handling between animals: a fresh dry towel, and often the one a customer notices.

Once the stages are written down, the count per animal stops being an opinion. Ask the customer to count stages for one week in their own salon and to note which stage runs short. That number travels. A number lifted from a supplier's brochure does not.

What the Numbers on the Sheet Actually Fix

Every specification that reaches a buyer is a set of bands rather than fixed articles. Weight is quoted across 40–130 g/m², the material list runs from viscose through cotton to wood pulp blends, and the two size envelopes that matter in this vertical are 30 or 40 × 60–100 cm for handling and grooming towels and 60–80 × 100–160 cm for bath formats. A band is a negotiating space, not a promise that every point inside it behaves the same.

Read a band as three questions. Which part of it is this order actually in. What is fixed by the material and what by the weight. Which of the two may move if the price has to move. A buyer who cannot answer the third has not finished specifying. They have listed options.

Two clarifications prevent most arguments later. A weight band says nothing about how a towel feels on a wet coat. And a size envelope is not a size list: the format for an order is one point inside it, agreed in writing, and that is what gets quoted.

Two Formats, and the Test That Picks Between Them

Folded bulk packs suit a business that holds its own stock and replenishes from a shelf. Individual wrap suits product that travels where nothing can be restocked mid-service, and where whoever opens it wants to know the towel inside has not been handled since packing. Neither is the upgrade. They answer different rooms.

Seasonality settles more of this than preference does. The National Retail Federation expects US pet owners to spend $920 million on costumes this year, up from $860 million in 2025, a rise of 7 percent [3]. Costume money is not towel money. What the figure dates is a peak: a nine-figure sum that lands on one weekend and then stops. If bookings in your customers' calendars bunch the same way, the peak weeks are when nobody has time to count towels, which is the argument for the format that needs no counting.

Ask for the two busiest weeks in the customer's own calendar before choosing a format.

What Jaroll Can Put on the Sheet

Jaroll makes pet grooming towels in folded bulk format, in viscose, viscose and polyester, cotton, and wood pulp blends, across the weight and size bands above. The sheet still needs the part only the buyer knows: which stage the towel serves, how many animals a pack covers in a day, and where it is opened.

Jaroll confirms weight, size, material, pack, carton, minimum quantity and lead time per SKU, subject to sales confirmation, because those are project decisions rather than catalog defaults. Regular samples are usually free and the buyer covers international courier. A specification written in stages can be quoted against stages; one written as a list of options can only be quoted as a span, and a span is what a buyer cannot compare.

If the next step is a sample, send the stage list with it. Buyers weighing pet grooming towels across suppliers get more usable answers from a sheet that says where each towel is used than from one that says how much it weighs.

Sources

1. GlobalPETS, 2026-10-27. Tractor Supply's pet business grows 5% in Q3 as sales trends improve. https://globalpetindustry.com/news/tractor-supplys-pet-business-grows-5-in-q3-as-sales-trends-improve/
2. GlobalPETS, 2026-10-26. Zooplus expands marketplace offer in Spain, with more markets planned for 2027. https://globalpetindustry.com/news/zooplus-expands-marketplace-offer-in-spain-with-more-markets-planned-for-2027/
3. GlobalPETS, 2026-10-26. Pet brands and retailers tap into the Halloween spending spree. https://globalpetindustry.com/news/pet-brands-and-retailers-tap-into-the-halloween-spending-spree/