Your Quickstart Guide
to Selling Disposable Gloves

How should you plan for your glove-selling business now that the post-pandemic market has stabilized and new marketplace terrain has been revealed? What kind of gloves are in demand in the market? What features are now desirable? Where does the opportunity lie? Here, we’ll answer these questions and more.

Start with Three Products in Three Sizes

You can offer a full line of gloves that meets most of your customers’ needs with fewer products than you might think. In fact, it’s best to start with just three or four and build as you go. We recommend starting with three products in M, L, and XL sizes. Specifically, we’d recommend starting with a heavy duty, midweight, and lightweight glove in your choice of materials. The exact material you use depends on your customers’ use case, so you’ll have to learn a little bit about the various materials to pick a specific glove. Here’s a short overview to get you started:

Glove 101:

Common Materials

The most commonly used disposable glove materials and here’s a quick overview of each one:

Vinyl polyvinyl chloride

Vinyl is the least expensive option, so it’s a great choice for businesses where frequent glove changes are required. It’s also lightweight and versatile, and a popular choice for restaurant staff, janitors, beauty salons, tattoo parlors, and others who go through multiple pairs of disposable gloves on a given day.

Latex natural latex rubber

Latex is the softest of the three materials, and also allows for the most tactile sensitivity. In other words, you’ll actually be able to feel textures and surfaces while wearing a pair of latex gloves. For this reason, latex gloves are a popular choice for surgeons and dentists who need to be able to feel through their gloves. Of course, some people have allergies to latex, so you’ll want to make sure to include some non-latex options.

Nitrile nitrile butadiene rubber

Nitrile gloves are the most puncture-resistant. Our HandCare nitrile gloves are sturdy, and feature a raised diamond texture with 70% more surface area to wick moisture away, giving you an unbeatable grip. If you’re not sure which material is right for your customers, you can’t go wrong with one heavy duty nitrile glove, a mid-weight latex glove, and one lightweight vinyl. Even better, reach out to your HandCare salesperson and we’ll help you pick the perfect lineup.

Selecting Your Initial Product Line

This all may seem a little overwhelming at first, but not to worry! We’ve put together a number of useful resources to help you get started. To begin, you’ll want to check out the HandCare ordering portal to see what products are available and get in touch with your HandCare sales rep for any questions that come up about individual products. Our full catalog of products to suit every need is a good place to start when trying to decide which gloves to sell. Beyond that, we have a Chemical Resistance Chart you may want to consult. This will help you determine which gloves are best-suited for working with toxic or dangerous chemicals. Our Glove Sizing Guide can also help you figure out which sizes of gloves you’ll want to sell.

Going In-Depth

How to Pick
The Perfect
Gloves?

In the post-COVID era, more and more employers are beginning to take worker protection seriously, and more and more employees are demanding safer conditions. As such, we anticipate demand for disposable gloves to continue rising. Disposable gloves already play an essential role in a wide variety of industries, and that role is only going to expand as time goes on.

With this increased demand comes an increased need for information and education. What if a customer asks you about materials or thicknesses? What if they tell you a glove feels too “slippery” and wants a different material? What will you tell them?

Of course, you can always contact your HandCare sales rep, and we’ll be more than happy to assist you. But if you’d like a handy reference, or simply to get a little more educated about gloves, we’d recommend covering the slightly more detailed guide below. We’ll again start with materials (but with a few more details), then move on to grades, textures, and thickness. Finally, we’ll go over a few examples of which gloves are best at companies like doctors’ offices or auto shops.

Vinyl

Vinyl has a smooth texture and a roomy fit. It’s looser than latex or nitrile, and also is the least puncture-resistant. They’re meant to be used on a very temporary basis.
Vinyl gloves are lightweight, but they do provide protection against most cleaning solutions. As such, these are a good option for those who work in sanitation, but keep in mind these are not recommended for use with harsh chemicals or petroleum-based products.
When frequent glove changes are necessary, e.g. when making sandwiches at a deli, vinyl gloves are a great option. They’re inexpensive, so you can go through multiple pairs a day without breaking the budget.

Latex

Latex is the softest and most comfortable of these materials. Latex gloves offer high dexterity, resilience, elasticity, and tactile sensation.
Because of concerns about latex allergies, some states have banned the use of latex for restaurant workers. However, less than 1% of the population has this allergy. As such, latex gloves can still be useful for a wide variety of applications.
Using a chlorinated solution during manufacturing can help to reduce the latex proteins in the gloves and cause less severe reactions among those who are allergic. Our HandCare latex gloves have been carefully manufactured to help reduce the likelihood of a severe allergic reaction.

Nitrile

Nitrile is the strongest material of these options. It has three times the puncture resistance of the other materials as well as greater resistance to abrasion from harsh chemicals. Nitrile gloves also have the longest shelf-life.
The fit and feel of these gloves is similar to that of latex, but unlike latex gloves, nitrile gloves don’t pose a risk for those who have allergies.
These gloves are ideal for those who work with rough surfaces and harsh chemicals, including automotive workers, manufacturers, plumbers, and painters. These are also a popular choice in the food industry, in part because some states don’t allow restaurant workers to use latex gloves.

Grades

There are two types of glove grades: industrial and exam-grade (i.e. medical use). The FDA regulates gloves by measuring their strength, minimum barrier protection, and AQL (acceptable quality level). The AQL refers to the product’s freedom from pinholes during water testing. A lower AQL number refers to a higher-quality glove. Exam-grade gloves need to have a low AQL number, and they may be used in industrial applications, but industrial gloves cannot be used for medical or exam purposes.

Texture

Some gloves have a textured surface (as opposed to a smooth surface). The idea is to give you a better grip, which is important for many types of work that needs to be done with gloves. There are many different ways that gloves can be textured: The entire surface, the fingers, the fingertips, and/or the palms may be textured, depending on the intended application of the glove.

Textures also come in a variety of levels of roughness. Some textures have a micro-roughening surface, while others have an aggressive raised diamond texture to make sure the gloves don’t lose their grip when they get wet.

Thickness

The ideal thickness of a glove depends on the job it’s used for. Thicker gloves (around 8 mils) are best for working with rougher or more dangerous materials, as they offer the most protection. Lightweight gloves (around 3 mils) are better for working with more delicate materials. They also tend to be less expensive, so they’re ideal for applications that require frequent glove changes. Gloves of medium thickness (5-6 mils) are the most versatile, offering more protection than lightweight gloves but more flexibility than thick gloves.

Note that until recently, the standard way to measure glove thickness was with mils. However, the industry is currently moving towards measuring glove thickness in grams. This is a measurement of weight, not distance, and it has the potential to be more accurate than measuring glove thickness with mils. For more information, see our recent article about the change from mils to grams in the glove industry.

Examples

Lightweight, inexpensive vinyl gloves are a great option for janitors, restaurant staff and food industry workers, automotive detailers, and beauty salon staff, among others. These are for any type of work that deals with safe, non-toxic materials and requires frequent glove changes.

Medium-thick gloves offer more protection than vinyl, so they’re a good option for industrial workers who deal with heavier duty materials, such as factory workers or anyone who deals with machinery, as well as law enforcement officers. These gloves can be made of any latex or nitrile. Latex is a great option for its softness and flexibility, but for those with latex allergies, nitrile is also available.

Thick nitrile gloves offer the most protection, so they’re great for industries such as automotive repair, or anyone who works with harsh chemicals. These gloves are often textured, and because they’re thicker than other disposable gloves, they last longer. In fact, they may survive multiple uses before they become punctured or otherwise unusable.

Of course, these are just examples. Our HandCare gloves are versatile, and it’s possible that more than one type of glove could suit a given application.

Your Quickstart Guide to Selling Disposable Gloves