Eighteen months. Forty-one prototypes. One towel.

Notes from the workshop in Porto — including the four prototypes that nearly killed the project and the small change that saved it.

The first version was beautiful.

That was the problem.

It looked exactly like something a body care brand should make. Soft. Minimal. Photogenic. The kind of towel you could fold beside a ceramic bottle and a glass of water and immediately understand the mood.

Then we used it.

Within three showers, it had lost its shape. Within five, it felt tired. By the end of the week, it had become the kind of object you quietly stop reaching for.

That was the first lesson.

A shower towel does not need to be beautiful on a table.

It needs to be useful when wet.

The project that was supposed to take six months

At the beginning, the brief sounded simple.

Create an exfoliating shower towel that felt more elevated than a loofah, more effective than a standard washcloth, and less aggressive than the scratchy body towels that leave skin feeling punished.

Something long enough to reach the back.

Textured enough to polish.

Soft enough to use often.

Quick-drying.

Easy to rinse.

Nice enough to leave in the bathroom without making the room look like a gym locker.

It sounded like a material problem.

It became a patience problem.

For eighteen months, the towel moved between sketches, samples, factory notes, shower tests, drying tests, edge tests, stretch tests, and the kind of conversations that sound ridiculous until you are deep inside the project.

Is this too soft?

Is this too rough?

Does it lather enough?

Does it drag when wet?

Does it dry overnight?

Does the edge curl?

Does the texture survive washing?

Does it feel expensive?

Does it actually exfoliate?

Can someone use it on their back without fighting it?

By the time we reached the final version, there had been forty-one prototypes.

Most were not terrible.

That was what made the process so difficult.

A terrible prototype is easy. You reject it and move on.

A nearly good prototype is dangerous. It tempts you to accept the compromise.

Prototype 7: the towel that looked perfect

Prototype 7 was the first one that felt like a real product.

The weave had a clean, refined texture. The colour held beautifully. It photographed well. Dry, it had exactly the kind of quiet, premium look we wanted.

Wet, it became limp.

The structure collapsed under water. The texture that looked elegant in the hand disappeared in the shower. It moved over the skin, but did not do enough. It created foam, but not grip. It felt pleasant, but forgettable.

That was not enough.

We were not trying to make a decorative bathroom object.

We were trying to make something people would miss when it was not there.

Prototype 7 taught us that a towel can look right and still fail the moment it meets real life.

Prototype 14: the one that exfoliated too well

Then came the opposite problem.

Prototype 14 worked.

Too well.

It had bite. You could feel it immediately. The first pass across the skin gave that satisfying polished feeling people associate with deep exfoliation. On rougher areas, it felt effective. On elbows, knees, shoulders, and legs, it made sense.

But after a full shower, it was too much.

The texture crossed the line from invigorating to harsh. Used quickly, it was fine. Used slowly, it became irritating. Used two days in a row, it started to feel like a mistake.

That was the second lesson.

Effective does not mean aggressive.

The body is not a pan to be scrubbed clean. Skin is living. It has a barrier. It has moods. It changes with weather, shaving, hormones, stress, clothing, and water temperature.

A good exfoliating towel should not depend on the user being careful every second.

It should have restraint built into it.

Prototype 14 was rejected because it misunderstood the assignment.

It polished the skin, yes.

But it did not respect it.

Prototype 21: the towel that stayed wet

Prototype 21 looked promising for a different reason.

It had a softer hand feel, a more balanced texture, and a generous length. It lathered beautifully. It reached the back easily. In the shower, it felt close to what we wanted.

Then we hung it up.

And waited.

And waited.

Hours later, the centre still felt damp.

The next morning, it was not completely dry.

That was the moment the loofah problem came back into the room.

We were not making an alternative to a loofah just to create another object that held moisture for too long. Drying time mattered. Not as a nice extra, but as part of the product’s hygiene logic.

A shower tool lives in a humid environment. It cannot be precious. It cannot require perfect conditions. It needs to rinse clean and dry properly in an ordinary bathroom, not only in a bright studio with perfect airflow.

Prototype 21 felt good on the skin.

But it failed after the shower.

And after the shower is where most bathroom products reveal the truth.

Prototype 29: the one everyone almost approved

Prototype 29 nearly became the towel.

It had the right length. The right visual mood. The right level of exfoliation for most people. It dried reasonably well. It lathered nicely. The workshop liked it. The feedback was positive.

Almost everyone said the same thing.

“This is good.”

But good is a dangerous word.

Good means you can launch.

Good means you can move on.

Good means you can convince yourself the tiny problem does not matter.

The tiny problem was control.

The towel worked, but it did not feel controlled enough in the hand. When wet and full of foam, it had a slight looseness to it. Not dramatic. Not a failure. Just enough to make the experience feel less precise than it should.

You could still use it.

You could still enjoy it.

But it lacked the quiet confidence we were chasing.

A product used directly on the body has to feel intuitive. The hand should understand it before the mind starts judging it. You should not have to adjust, fold, grip and re-grip to get the right pressure.

Prototype 29 was the hardest one to reject because it was not wrong.

It just was not finished.

The small change that saved it

The breakthrough did not look like a breakthrough.

There was no dramatic new material. No futuristic technology. No grand redesign.

Just a small adjustment to the weave tension and finishing.

That was it.

A tiny structural change that made the towel hold itself differently when wet. The texture stayed present without becoming rough. The cloth moved more cleanly across the skin. The lather spread better. The towel rinsed faster. It hung with more structure. It felt less like a piece of fabric and more like a tool.

This is the part of product development that is hard to explain from the outside.

Sometimes the difference between acceptable and right is almost invisible.

A few millimetres.

A slight change in density.

A different edge.

A weave that opens just enough.

A material that behaves better after water, not before it.

The final version did not shout.

It simply stopped arguing with us.

Why Porto mattered

There is a particular patience to working through a physical product in a place that still understands materials.

In Porto, the process felt slower in the best way.

Not slow as in inefficient.

Slow as in attentive.

There were tables covered in swatches, towels hanging from rails, notes written directly onto sample tags, edges being checked by hand, and the quiet repetition of people testing small differences that most customers will never consciously notice.

That is the strange beauty of making something simple.

The end product should feel obvious.

Of course it is this length.

Of course it dries this way.

Of course the texture feels like that.

Of course it reaches the back.

Of course it rinses clean.

But obvious usually takes work.

A simple object can hide a lot of decisions.

What we refused to compromise on

We did not want a towel that felt impressive once and irritating by the third use.

We did not want a towel that looked beautiful dry but became weak in water.

We did not want a towel that held too much moisture.

We did not want something that needed a complicated care routine to stay usable.

We did not want harsh exfoliation disguised as effectiveness.

And we did not want to make another body care product that treats the skin like a problem to solve.

The goal was quieter than that.

A towel you reach for without thinking.

A texture that makes skin feel clean, smooth and awake.

A length that makes washing your back easy.

A structure that rinses properly.

A bathroom object that earns its place.

Forty-one prototypes later

The final towel is not the most dramatic version we made.

It is not the roughest.

It is not the softest.

It is not the most photogenic sample when perfectly folded under studio light.

It is the one that performed best in the real ritual.

Warm water.

Body wash.

Shoulders.

Back.

Legs.

Rinse.

Hang.

Repeat.

That was the standard.

Not how it looked in a launch photo.

How it behaved on an ordinary morning, in an ordinary bathroom, when the person using it was half-awake and just wanted to feel clean again.

After eighteen months, the lesson was surprisingly simple.

The best version of a product is not the one that tries hardest to impress you.

It is the one that quietly makes sense.

That is the towel we kept.