MONTCLAIR, N.J.—The YMCA here is asking its members to throw in the towel.
"GOT TOWEL?" say signs posted around the gym. "Please remember to leave your towels in the bins located throughout the facility before exiting!"
For nearly a year, the community center in this northern New Jersey town has been roiled by a perplexing mystery: the disappearing gym towel. The Y was losing an average of 50 of the tawdry things a day—costing it nearly $50,000 a year.
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Gym management made an announcement in August: no more towel service. Rebellion ensued. Some members threatened to quit. Others took matters into their own hands.
"Within 24 hours the towels were all stolen," said Jo Ann Short, chief executive officer of the YMCA of Montclair. "It was just amazing."
A clean towel has been a feature of fitness centers for decades, an unremarkable amenity that gym members have come to expect and gym management abandons at its peril.
Gyms across the country have tried to control the costs on their scrappy towels. It is a plight they share with hotels and their plusher towels.
In 2003 Holiday Inn held a nationwide Towel Amnesty Day, allowing guests to relieve themselves of the guilt of "borrowing" a towel, according to a spokeswoman. Guests were asked to share stories that were published in a coffee-table book. Thousands responded.
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Some gyms have come up with an easier solution: going towel-less. LA Fitness, a large nationwide chain, doesn't provide towel service at many locations.
Gym members' attachment to their towels has puzzled managers. Ms. Short of the Montclair Y says her towels are "ugly, thin and cheap."
Even Y members are stumped. "I mean, if you take a towel home, I don't understand why you wouldn't bring it back if it was accidental," said member Maryann Chach, 62 years old. "And why would anybody want these towels?"
Gym towels cost anywhere from 50 cents to more than $2, depending on the size and quality. "Should I feel bad about stealing those tiny white towels from the gym?" wrote a post on Quora, a question-and-answer website edited by users. "I find that they're much more useful as kitchen rags."
Tonya Jacobs, regional director of operations at Sports Club/LA and Reebok Sports Club/NY, said the chain budgets for towel theft. "I would say for every 25 to 35 members that walk through the club, one or two walk out with a towel," she said.
The Columbia Association in Maryland—a planned community with three fitness centers—twice tried to eliminate towels after determining the centers spend close to $500,000 annually on towel-related costs. In both cases, backlash from members stopped it from happening, said Rob Goldman, chief operating officer.
Joel Prescott, 64, was among the outraged when the issue of eliminating towels came up, most recently in 2010. "I use the gym every single day," he said. "It's a sanitation issue and it's a customer service issue."
Mr. Prescott admitted that over the course of 15 years he has hung on to a few towels himself. "I've got some of their towels right now sitting on my laundry shelf. It's predominantly inadvertent and it really is the cost of doing business."
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And why hasn't he returned them? "I don't even think about it, to be honest," he said.
At the YMCA in Jackson, Mich., towels were scrapped in 2008. Interim CEO Bob Louagie estimated that it lost anywhere from 50 to 100 members as a result. "Oh, they were upset," he recalled. Some members have since returned.
"Four years later they've come to accept it," said Mr. Louagie, who said the Y now sells towels for $2.
Jarred Fajerski, executive director of LifeBridge Health & Fitness in Baltimore, recently completed a study called "A day in the life of a towel." He is preparing a report to submit to his board on options to solve the theft problem, one of which includes using a device called Towel Tracker.
"It's surprising to me that it's taken someone so long to figure out a way that we can track each towel and create some sort of towel accountability," he said.
Steven Molewyk, a Laundromat owner in Grand Rapids, Mich., founded Towel Tracker in 2009 after witnessing the number of towels he was cleaning for local gyms. So he devised a locker-style device that required scanning membership cards to receive towels. The system keeps track of how many towels a member takes and returns—or doesn't return.
Sales haven't been brisk: About seven companies are using or testing the system, Mr. Molewyk said. "Everybody's concerned about how the customer will react," he said.
Petra Hygienic Systems International, a Toronto-based firm, sells an antitheft system that tags towels like clothing in a retail shop. An alarm sounds if a member leaves with one. Founder Ben Whitham estimated it has about 10 customers.
"The clubs like the concept. However, it's a big leap for them to actually install," said Mr. Whitham. "I guess it's the accusatory implications."
In Montclair, Ms. Short, the YMCA CEO, took suggestions after members rejected losing towel service. They ranged from requiring collateral for a towel to charging money.
One member suggested Towel Tracker. The gym tested the system for three months, putting the device downstairs.
The card reader sometimes went on the fritz. At one point, it determined Ms. Short, the gym's CEO, had swiped towels. She hadn't. The Montclair Y stopped using Towel Tracker in late February.
Mr. Molewyk of Towel Tracker said the glitch was a "simple wiring problem" that has been fixed. He said other customers haven't had similar problems. Ms. Short said she may bring the system back in six months.
[Related: The Busy Person’s Slim-Down Plan]
Until then it is back to the honor code. And most are thankful for that.
"The towel issue created a lot of anxiety and distrust," said Roosevelt Weaver, a 75-year-old Y member who serves on the board. "I think people are happy now. You can get towels."
"GOT TOWEL?" say signs posted around the gym. "Please remember to leave your towels in the bins located throughout the facility before exiting!"
For nearly a year, the community center in this northern New Jersey town has been roiled by a perplexing mystery: the disappearing gym towel. The Y was losing an average of 50 of the tawdry things a day—costing it nearly $50,000 a year.
[More from WSJ.com: When to Clean the Sheets]
Gym management made an announcement in August: no more towel service. Rebellion ensued. Some members threatened to quit. Others took matters into their own hands.
"Within 24 hours the towels were all stolen," said Jo Ann Short, chief executive officer of the YMCA of Montclair. "It was just amazing."
A clean towel has been a feature of fitness centers for decades, an unremarkable amenity that gym members have come to expect and gym management abandons at its peril.
Gyms across the country have tried to control the costs on their scrappy towels. It is a plight they share with hotels and their plusher towels.
In 2003 Holiday Inn held a nationwide Towel Amnesty Day, allowing guests to relieve themselves of the guilt of "borrowing" a towel, according to a spokeswoman. Guests were asked to share stories that were published in a coffee-table book. Thousands responded.
[More from WSJ.com: Will Facebook and Zynga Remain Inseparable?]
Some gyms have come up with an easier solution: going towel-less. LA Fitness, a large nationwide chain, doesn't provide towel service at many locations.
Gym members' attachment to their towels has puzzled managers. Ms. Short of the Montclair Y says her towels are "ugly, thin and cheap."
Even Y members are stumped. "I mean, if you take a towel home, I don't understand why you wouldn't bring it back if it was accidental," said member Maryann Chach, 62 years old. "And why would anybody want these towels?"
Gym towels cost anywhere from 50 cents to more than $2, depending on the size and quality. "Should I feel bad about stealing those tiny white towels from the gym?" wrote a post on Quora, a question-and-answer website edited by users. "I find that they're much more useful as kitchen rags."
Tonya Jacobs, regional director of operations at Sports Club/LA and Reebok Sports Club/NY, said the chain budgets for towel theft. "I would say for every 25 to 35 members that walk through the club, one or two walk out with a towel," she said.
The Columbia Association in Maryland—a planned community with three fitness centers—twice tried to eliminate towels after determining the centers spend close to $500,000 annually on towel-related costs. In both cases, backlash from members stopped it from happening, said Rob Goldman, chief operating officer.
Joel Prescott, 64, was among the outraged when the issue of eliminating towels came up, most recently in 2010. "I use the gym every single day," he said. "It's a sanitation issue and it's a customer service issue."
Mr. Prescott admitted that over the course of 15 years he has hung on to a few towels himself. "I've got some of their towels right now sitting on my laundry shelf. It's predominantly inadvertent and it really is the cost of doing business."
[More from WSJ.com: Facebook's Growth Slows as IPO Nears]
And why hasn't he returned them? "I don't even think about it, to be honest," he said.
At the YMCA in Jackson, Mich., towels were scrapped in 2008. Interim CEO Bob Louagie estimated that it lost anywhere from 50 to 100 members as a result. "Oh, they were upset," he recalled. Some members have since returned.
"Four years later they've come to accept it," said Mr. Louagie, who said the Y now sells towels for $2.
Jarred Fajerski, executive director of LifeBridge Health & Fitness in Baltimore, recently completed a study called "A day in the life of a towel." He is preparing a report to submit to his board on options to solve the theft problem, one of which includes using a device called Towel Tracker.
"It's surprising to me that it's taken someone so long to figure out a way that we can track each towel and create some sort of towel accountability," he said.
Steven Molewyk, a Laundromat owner in Grand Rapids, Mich., founded Towel Tracker in 2009 after witnessing the number of towels he was cleaning for local gyms. So he devised a locker-style device that required scanning membership cards to receive towels. The system keeps track of how many towels a member takes and returns—or doesn't return.
Sales haven't been brisk: About seven companies are using or testing the system, Mr. Molewyk said. "Everybody's concerned about how the customer will react," he said.
Petra Hygienic Systems International, a Toronto-based firm, sells an antitheft system that tags towels like clothing in a retail shop. An alarm sounds if a member leaves with one. Founder Ben Whitham estimated it has about 10 customers.
"The clubs like the concept. However, it's a big leap for them to actually install," said Mr. Whitham. "I guess it's the accusatory implications."
In Montclair, Ms. Short, the YMCA CEO, took suggestions after members rejected losing towel service. They ranged from requiring collateral for a towel to charging money.
One member suggested Towel Tracker. The gym tested the system for three months, putting the device downstairs.
The card reader sometimes went on the fritz. At one point, it determined Ms. Short, the gym's CEO, had swiped towels. She hadn't. The Montclair Y stopped using Towel Tracker in late February.
Mr. Molewyk of Towel Tracker said the glitch was a "simple wiring problem" that has been fixed. He said other customers haven't had similar problems. Ms. Short said she may bring the system back in six months.
[Related: The Busy Person’s Slim-Down Plan]
Until then it is back to the honor code. And most are thankful for that.
"The towel issue created a lot of anxiety and distrust," said Roosevelt Weaver, a 75-year-old Y member who serves on the board. "I think people are happy now. You can get towels."
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