Terry Town (asi/90913) is making an investment in U.S.-grown cotton. The promotional products supplier went through a certification process earlier this year so it can label its beach towels with a COTTON USA trademark.

Making the switch to 100% U.S.-grown cotton was important, says Alp Ereren, content manager at Terry Town, as a measure of transparency and to ensure that no raw materials used in their products came from forced labor. “It turned out to be a higher cost to us,” he says of the changeover, “but it was a cost we were willing to absorb.”

Terry Town went through a certification process so it can label its beach towels as 100% U.S.-grown cotton.

The supplier’s beach towels, though manufactured in China, use U.S.-grown cotton. As part of the certification process, a third-party auditor visited Terry Town’s factory in China to make sure it was up to date on labor practices. The Cotton Council International (CCI) is the nonprofit trade association that promotes U.S. cotton fiber and manufactured cotton products around the globe with its COTTON USA trademark. According to the nonprofit, U.S. cotton has benefits over other cotton in terms of quality and sustainability.

Terry Town’s 100% cotton beach towels will include this COTTON USA label.

At the beginning of 2021, the United States banned cotton from the Xinjiang region of China over alleged forced labor of the Uyghur ethnic group. At the time, leading promo suppliers said they’d been proactive about avoiding sourcing from the region. Similarly, Terry Town had no products with materials made using forced labor, but decided to seek out the COTTON USA certification “just to have full transparency for where our products are coming from,” Ereren says.

The supplier still has leftover inventory of beach towels made with cotton from China, but by mid-2022, it expects to have an inventory made completely of 100% U.S.-grown cotton beach towels, according to Ereren.

In addition to its push into U.S.-grown cotton, Terry Town has also been expanding its eco-friendly offerings. At the beginning of 2020, the supplier offered one blanket made of recycled plastic bottles. “When we first introduced the blanket, we actually didn’t receive much of a response to it,” Ereren says. “There wasn’t much traction or hype around it.”

But with the onset of the pandemic, the trend changed, and more clients were looking for sustainable products. Terry Town has since added two more beach towels, using recycled cotton from Turkey to its lineup. “It’s great to be able to offer those eco-friendly options,” Ereren says.