When Towel Tracker founder Steven Molewyk was seven years old, he took apart his father’s lawn mower engine, in an ill-fated attempt to make it run on water. Although his experiment didn’t work, Molewyk successfully put the engine back together and got the lawn mower running again—a feat that developed his mechanical and problem solving abilities, while helping him avoid a huge punishment from his father. During his teen years, Molewyk honed his mechanical and problem solving abilities by rebuilding car engines and transmissions. This culminated in restoring a canary yellow 1965 Mustang, which he took on a road trip across the country and back.

 

Molewyk eventually channeled his skills into a successful career as a small business owner who purchased, rehabbed, and sold numerous houses and buildings in west Michigan. This included a vacant storefront property that Molewyk converted into a thriving commercial laundromat. One of the laundromat’s customers was a large fitness club whose manager griped to Molewyk about the 3,500 towels that club members were stealing each month. This towel theft was costing the fitness club about $50,000 a year, and Molewyk stated, “I remember thinking, ‘That’s a lot of towels getting stolen, there’s got to be a way to stop this from happening!’”

 

After mulling over the problem for a few days, Molewyk awoke from a nap one afternoon with a towel theft solution in his head. Leveraging his mechanical and problem solving abilities once again, Molewyk sketched out the idea and pulled together a team that helped him develop, prototype, patent, and launch the product that is now Towel Tracker. His father—whose lawn mower is in excellent working condition—was one of the first investors in the company.

 

In 2011, the Towel Tracker prototype was installed at the Walker Ice & Fitness Center in Walker, Michigan, where it immediately reduced towel loss, towel usage, and laundry costs, and resulted in a cleaner facility as well. Since then, Towel Tracker’s customer base has expanded to include hotels and resorts experiencing chronic poolside towel loss problems. Towel Trackers can now be found in hotels, resorts, and fitness clubs in 21 states plus Puerto Rico. This includes resorts at SeaWorld and on the Disney World property in Orlando.

 

Towel Tracker is headquartered in Comstock Park, Michigan just outside of Grand Rapids.