Casa da Toalha Annual Study 2026: what Brazilians look for in a towel
English edition. The original Portuguese study is at casadatoalha.com.br/pages/estudo-toalha-2026. Same figures, same base, same period.
Proprietary data study · 1st annual edition · Published August 2026
What Brazilians look for in a towel
21,546 real orders, 46 months of seasonality and 12 months of Google search data, analysed by Casa da Toalha (an online shop in Brusque, Santa Catarina, one of Brazil's textile regions, selling online since August 2009), answer what Brazilians look for, buy, pay and repeat when the subject is towels.
The study in 5 numbers:
- 89.7% of bath revenue leaves in kits or five piece sets. The single towel is only 9.7%. The towel became a household set purchase. (21,546 orders, Jan-Jul 2026)
- The number one doubt before buying is not price, it is quality: 22.3% of buyers feared the towel would not be soft or would not match what they expected; high price was the doubt of only 2.2%. (checkout survey, n=502)
- Reputation closes the sale: one in five buyers says what gave them confidence was Reclame Aqui, Brazil's main consumer reputation platform, or other customers' reviews. (checkout survey, n=226, treated as a signal)
- November is the towel month: four years in a row with a November peak. In November 2024 sales almost doubled against a typical month. The southern hemisphere winter (June to August) is the second wave. (46 months measured)
- Brazilians learned to say "gramatura": more than 20,000 searches a year with terms such as "toalha gramatura 500" and "qual a melhor gramatura", the Portuguese words for towel GSM. (Google Search Console, 12 months)
"What surprised us most is that the biggest doubt for someone buying a towel is not the price. It is whether it will really be soft. Price was the worry of only 2% of our customers; quality, of more than 22%. Answering that question is what we have been doing for 17 years."
Ana Carolina Nielson, founder of Casa da Toalha
Finding 1: the towel became a kit purchase
89.7%
Of every R$100 sold in bath towels, R$89.70 leaves in kits or five piece sets; the single towel accounts for R$9.70. The Brazilian consumer does not replace one piece: they renew the whole bathroom at once, spending on average R$332 per order.
Revenue share of bath towels by format · 21,546 orders · Jan to Jul 2026.
Finding 2: the number one doubt is not price, it is quality
22.3% vs 2.2%
Asked about their biggest worry before finishing the purchase, 22.3% of the 502 respondents named quality ("will it be soft and absorbent?", "will it be what I expected?"). A high final price was the answer of only 2.2%. Shipping cost (16.1%) and not knowing the shop (17.3%) both weigh more than price.
Checkout survey · 29 Jun to 3 Aug 2026 · n=502.
Finding 3: reputation closes the sale
1 in 5
Among buyers who answered what gave them most confidence to finish the purchase, 12.4% named Reclame Aqui and 7.1% named other customers' reviews and photographs; together, 19.5%. On Google, the shop name alongside "reclame aqui" or "é confiável" (is it trustworthy) added up to around 18,000 impressions in 12 months. Brazilians check reputation before they pay.
Checkout survey · 27 Jul to 3 Aug 2026 · n=226 (one week sample, treated as a signal) + Google Search Console · Aug 2025 to Jul 2026.
Finding 4: November is the towel month
4 years in a row
Across the whole measured series (October 2022 to July 2026), November was the peak month every year. In November 2024, transactions almost doubled against a typical month of the same year. The second wave is winter: June, July and August form the second strongest block. December to February is the trough. Brazilians replace their towels on Black Friday and in the cold, not at Christmas.
November transactions, year by year · own measurement (GA4) · Oct 2022 to Jul 2026.
Finding 5: Brazilians learned to say "gramatura"
+20,000 searches a year
Technical terms such as "toalha de banho gramatura 500" and "qual a melhor gramatura para toalha de banho", which ask about towel GSM, added up to more than 20,000 impressions in 12 months reaching a single shop. Industry vocabulary became consumer language, and the quality reference Brazilians use is the hotel experience ("toalha de hotel", "5 estrelas": around 15,000 impressions).
Google Search Console · casadatoalha.com.br · 1 Aug 2025 to 31 Jul 2026.
Finding 6: the trajectory, with four straight years of first half growth
+48.6%
In the measured series, annual transactions grew 48.6% from 2023 to 2025, and the January to July period grew four years in a row: 11.2k, 16.6k, 17.0k and 18.1k transactions (2023 to 2026). January to July 2026 is the best first half of the series, up 6.3% in transactions on 2025.
| Year | Transactions | Change |
|---|---|---|
| 2023 (1st full year measured) | 20,703 | - |
| 2024 | 35,195 | +70.0% |
| 2025 | 30,758 | -12.6% (vs record year; +48.6% vs 2023) |
| 2026 (Jan-Jul) | 18,072 | +6.3% vs Jan-Jul 2025, best first half of the series |
Own measurement (GA4) · Oct 2022 to Jul 2026. The company has sold online since August 2009; the data series begins in Oct 2022. For honesty, this study does not present itself as "17 years of data".
Where Brazil buys towels online
Sao Paulo concentrates 35.2% of orders, followed by Rio de Janeiro (13.8%) and Minas Gerais (11.4%). The three southern states add up to 14.7% and the northeast to 12.5%. In the study window, all 27 Brazilian federal units placed orders, from Acre to Sao Paulo.
21,546 orders · Jan to Jul 2026.
How to cite this study
Casa da Toalha Annual Study 2026: "What Brazilians look for in a towel". Casa da Toalha (Brusque, Santa Catarina, Brazil), August 2026. Available at: www.casadatoalha.com.br/pages/brazilian-towel-market-study-2026
The charts on this page may be republished with the credit that accompanies each image. Aggregated data for download below.
Methodology
This study analyses 21,546 orders placed at the Casa da Toalha shop between 1 January and 31 July 2026 (own e-commerce platform), 46 months of transactions measured by analytics (Oct 2022 to Jul 2026), 12 months of search data from Google Search Console (Aug 2025 to Jul 2026) and checkout surveys with 502 and 226 respondents (June to August 2026). Sales figures were verified against two independent sources, with a divergence below 2%.
Declared limitations: the base reflects the customers of a single shop, not a probabilistic sample of Brazil. Statements about the country use the demand side (Google) and public sources. The 226 answer sample covers one week and is treated as a signal. The data series begins in Oct 2022; the company's earlier history (founded in 2009) is not in this base. Breakdowns by colour are not published in this edition because of a catalogue limitation.
Last updated: 22 August 2026.
Open data: the aggregated table with every figure in the study (with no identifiable customer data) is available in CSV: download the study spreadsheet (CSV). CC BY 4.0 licence. Free to use with credit.
Market context
The Brazilian textile and apparel sector turned over R$212.6 billion in 2024, with 25,300 companies and 1.3 million direct jobs, according to ABIT, the Brazilian Textile and Apparel Industry Association (Notícias Agrícolas, 2025; sector profile at ABIT). Both sources are in Portuguese. Casa da Toalha is based in Brusque, Santa Catarina, one of the hubs of Brazilian textile production.
About Casa da Toalha and press contact
Casa da Toalha is a Brazilian online retailer of towels and bed, table and bath linens, based in Brusque, Santa Catarina, selling online since August 2009, founded by Ana Carolina Nielson. Trademark registered with INPI, the Brazilian patent and trademark office (filed 6 December 2022, granted 16 April 2024). The shop's current reputation can be checked on its official Reclame Aqui profile.
Press: financeiro@casadatoalha.com.br. The founder is available to comment on the data, in writing, in English. Next edition of the study: 2027 (annual series). All editions at www.casadatoalha.com.br/pages/estudos.
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