The Secret Behind the Popularity of “Blissful Towel” by the 76 Years-Old Business Uchino in Asia
2023.06.26
LIFEThe sweaty summer is here. This is the season when towels are a must. Today we are introducing Blissful Towel by Uchino Co., Ltd. (established in 1947, Chuo-ku, Tokyo), which has been in business for 76 years. Blissful Towel was born through the discovery of new value in towels, which took about two years to complete. The towel’s texture, which goes beyond functionality and gives you a sense of blissfulness the moment you touch it, has recently become popular at Takashimaya and other stores in Singapore, and in September 2022, the company opened a new store in a complex in the central business district of Singapore.
Why is Uchino’s Blissful Towel so popular now? The secret lies in the Japanese manufacturer’s unique attention to detail.
First of all, the company uses extra-long cotton, which has a fiber length of 35 mm or more, and is considered to be the highest quality raw material. The rare and highly valuable extra-long cotton, of which only about 5% can be harvested from a whole cotton crop, produces a shiny, smooth texture.
The most important feature of the Blissful Towel is its fluffy texture that makes your heart flutter when you rub the towel against your skin. To bring out this texture, the greatest attention was given to the fineness of the yarn.
In order to achieve towels with the highest quality softness, suppleness, and smooth texture ever touched, prototypes were repeatedly produced with a variety of yarns. As a result of trial and error, discovery was made that a very fine yarn, 100 count, used for high-end dress shirts, etc., could achieve the texture the company was looking for. Because of the need for a stable supply of high-quality raw materials, advanced manufacturing techniques, and a great deal of labor, this 100 count ultrafine yarn is almost never used in the towel industry. Blissful Towel is a unique towel that is the culmination of the company’s passion for towels and its outstanding technology.
The sense of blissfulness offered by this Blissful Towel has been validated not only by word of mouth but also through experiments. The ARTQ institute, which provides aromatherapy education and education utilizing organic products from a global perspective, conducted an experiment on 29 men and women to measure changes in their autonomic nervous system before and after using the Blissful Towel for five minutes. The institute was reportedly able to measure that, after the use of the towel, over half of the participants were in a state where the sympathetic and parasympathetic nerves were working in balance.
In December 2022, the cumulative total of shipments of the Blissful Towel series exceeded 150,000 towels. The company explained the reason for creating Blissful Towel as follows: “When the company was founded some 80 years ago, towels were a luxury item, but now they have become indispensable in every aspect of our lives. In our journey to expand the possibilities of towels, we went back to the basics with the concept of creating an unprecedented towel that fills both body and soul with blissfulness the moment you touch it.”
Blissful Towel is popular as a gift. Why not deliver blissfulness to the familiar faces in your life with a gesture of gratitude?
[Product Information] Bath towel (approx. 70 x 140 cm): 13,200 yen
Small bath towel (approx. 50 x 100 cm) 8,800 yen
Face towel (approx. 34 x 85 cm): 4,620 yen
Towel handkerchief (approx. 26.5 x 26.5 cm): 2,970 yen
[Business]
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