Sell Safety With Disposable Industrial Towels

To encourage customers to switch from laundered towels to disposable industrial towels, jan/san distributors can emphasize how they can create a safer workplace.

Anthony Testa, business manager-product management at MSC Industrial Direct, Melville, N.Y., says he begins the consultative selling process with marketing materials designed to educate users about alternatives to launderable shop towels. This strategy may incorporate a direct mail piece discussing the features and benefits of disposable industrial towels or an e-mail promotion sharing the Gradient study’s findings, or findings of their own.

Testa follows up with a site visit and analysis, where he meets with the company’s safety director and shares various research about launderable shop towels.

“We may even take some of their shop rags and send them out for analysis and share the results of what’s in those rags,” says Testa. “A safety director’s main concern is the safety of their employees, and if you can show them that disposable towels are a safer alternative, it’s an easy transition.”

Making comparisons between the two options helps, says Testa. He often asks clients to picture  a worker using a shop towel to wipe his hands after he washed them, and the rag he pulls out of the box contains mercury, lead and other contaminants he didn’t know were there. Are his hands clean after he wiped them? Now imagine pulling a new disposable industrial towel out of a box.

“They are always clean and fresh and made from virgin materials,” says Testa. “They are nontoxic, and this is one of the first things we point out.”