If your shop feels like it’s constantly scrambling, you’re not alone. Tracking down missing information, hunting for lost garments or cleaning up preventable mistakes…these are all symptoms of the chaos shops face every day.
The truth is the shops that run smoothly and profitably are not doing anything magical. They have simply nailed down one key ingredient: a standard.
Let me tell you a quick story. The Roman Empire, one of the most successful organizations in history, was built using a simple tool. A 10-foot wooden rod called a Decempeda. This wasn’t just for measuring; it was an easy way to implement a workable system. The size of the rod was the width of an ox team. Ten feet. This tool helped ensure that everything from roads to camps to supply depots was laid out with standard and precision. No matter where you were in the empire, you found conformity.
Here’s the thing. They didn’t have one rod that everyone used. They had thousands. Plus, they trained everyone on the standard and built their infrastructure around this measurement. It didn’t matter who did the work, where it occurred or what they were doing. The standard was the same, every time.
Your Custom Decorated Apparel Shop’s Own Decempeda
Now, consider your shop. What’s your Decempeda? Do you have a clear, documented system for how orders move from the customer’s order to production? How do you ensure every order has exactly what is needed? No guessing. No chasing. No “oops” moments when you realize you are out of an ink or thread color, or ordered adult shirts instead of youth.
Many shops don’t have a true standard for their work. They’re winging it. Which is why they struggle with rework, missed deadlines, unhappy customers and limited profitability.
In this article, we’re going to dig into how you can organize your ordering process from top to bottom. Whether you are using an industry software system or a simple clipboard and a spreadsheet, it doesn’t matter. We’ll talk about how setting clear standards (your own Decempeda) will simplify your life, save you money and make your team a lot happier. Plus, we’ll dive into the idea of limiting your product offerings, which is a power move that keeps things tight and profitable.
Let’s get your shop out of scramble mode and into standard mode.
Why Systems are Essential for Success in Custom Decorated Apparel
If there is one thing that sinks a shop faster into chaos than anything else, it is a sloppy ordering and receiving process. Orders come in. Something is missing or miscommunicated. Deadlines slip. Customers’ expectations are missed, and they get frustrated.
Your decorated-apparel shop’s operators shouldn’t have to hunt around for the information needed to do their jobs. Photo by Itsanan – stock.adobe.com
And your team? It is an all-hands-on-deck crisis to pick up the pieces.
But it doesn’t have to be this way. A dedicated systemized standard for how orders move from Point A to Point Z, regardless of the size, due date or other parameters, can solve these challenges. This is where your process Decempeda comes in. Like the Roman Empire’s rod, your ordering system needs to be clear, simple and repeatable. It should work consistently, regardless of who handles the order, the type of job or when it is due. When everyone follows the same playbook, things just work. Let’s break down why this matters:
Error Reduction, Critical Decorating Information
The number one reason for delayed shipping, wrong garments or incomplete orders? Missing or incomplete information. If your process doesn’t force you to gather all the critical information upfront (artwork, sizes, colors, garment types, in-hand dates, shipping info or other critical details), you’re gambling with every job.
Profit Protection, Protecting the Bottom Line
Mistakes don’t just cost you rework; they eat into your bottom line like an angry school of rabid minnows. A clear system helps you avoid surprise costs. How do you know you are doing things correctly? Do you have a quality control process to review information before it goes to the next step? In every department? You would be surprised at the power of a simple checklist review.
Trust = Happy Customers
Here’s a question: Do you pad your internal dates for scheduling purposes? Many shops do. Padding dates in the system is a band-aid that is applied because nobody trusts how things are running, so they use fake or padded due dates. However, when your shop has its act together with clarity, solid timelines, reliable information and on-time delivery, you get the one thing that all businesses want: predictability. This builds trust. Trust builds happy customers. It’s as simple as that.
Lower Stress Levels for Team Members
Your production staff shouldn’t have to chase down missing information or guess what one of the sales reps promised. Internal production work orders can’t have Post-its or sections highlighted for emphasis. Hand-written notes are also forbidden. If the information is not in the system, consider it missing. Your team has to be trained on where to find information and what to do with it. Regardless of your shop software, everyone has to use it the same way. A solid system built on standards gives everyone clarity and confidence in their work. In your shop, who owns this process?
It Makes Your Decorated Apparel Company Scalable
Want to grow your shop? You can’t do it with duct tape and luck. Clear processes are the foundation that allows you to grow without adding headaches. If you have a business goal to get to the next level, do you have the processes and training in place to achieve it? What do you need to scale?
Like a boulder rolling downhill, if your ordering system isn’t bulletproof, your entire workflow is at risk. This is the backbone of all of the rest of your efforts. Get it right, and everything becomes easier.
The Making of a Good Decorated Apparel Ordering System
It’s easy to point fingers when something fails, especially when tied to an ordering system. But what does a successful system actually look like? Glad you asked.
To me, a great ordering system is focused on maintaining a clear, consistent and easy-to-use process that forces accuracy and eliminates confusion.
Let’s break it down:
Complete Apparel Intake Information
Every order in your shop starts at the same place: intake. Whether it comes from an online print-on-demand store, a sales representative or a customer’s purchase order, if your system doesn’t require complete, correct information upfront, you are putting your shop’s reputation and money at risk. Mandatory fields are a good thing. You can’t buy a plane ticket or get your knee operated on without them, and there is a reason for that.
There should be a point during the work done in every department where operators have a chance to catch any errors in an order. Photo by Cultura Allies – stock.adobe.com
In my years, I’ve seen POs without the due date or shirt color. Online store orders that don’t have names or zip codes. Art requests with “Do something cool” as the directions for the creative team. And countless other Bozo silly examples.
Everyone knows what needs to be included in the order. So why do these situations still occur? You can’t let these challenges get past the gateway in your shop. Resolve these conflicts.
Why? Because you want a seamless handoff.
No shortcuts. No guesswork. You want a crystal-clear order flow from the front office to production. With every departmental step, there should be a bulletproof handoff.
Everyone involved (sales, customer service, purchasing, art, receiving, production, shipping) needs full visibility into what has been promised and what is expected.
Pro Tip: If you have to send internal follow-up emails to clarify something, your system is broken.
The Importance of Work Orders
Without asking anyone, can your staff read the work order and understand what needs to be done, when it needs to be done and what the customer expects to have completed?
Your work order is the single source of truth.
Nobody should have to attend a meeting to understand how or when to get an order out the door. When the complete set of instructions is embedded in your system and your crew is trained to understand the information, make decisions and perform their jobs, it’s a beautiful thing.
Order/Production Checkpoints and Approvals
This is where shops get sloppy. Do you have clear checkpoints in your processes where someone reviews the job before it moves forward? Stages where these checks should take place include:
- Order entry
- Purchasing
- Art approval
- Receiving
- Staging
- Production
- Post-production
- Shipping
- Post delivery follow-up
Every department should have a defined moment to catch errors before they become disasters. This can be implemented with a simple checklist. How many errors would your shop catch if someone reviewed their piece of the puzzle for correctness by spending two or three minutes with a quality control checklist? Are you measuring this?
Visibility/Tracking and Shop’s Systems
Where is the order right now? Who is working on it? And most importantly, what are we working on next?
At no point in a decorated-apparel shop’s ordering or production processes should there be any doubt as to what’s going on. Photo by LIGHTFIELD STUDIOS – stock.adobe.com
Your system should make this easy to answer. Whether it’s a digital dashboard or a simple tracking sheet, visibility keeps your entire team aligned.
Tracking is a concept that we know where something is at all times. Sure, you are probably more aware of it when you ship something, but what about a work order or a case of navy-blue hoodies? It also communicates progress, such as the status of an artwork order and whether it has been approved or not.
Imagine the power of having a system where your team can look up anything about an order in your system and instantly answer any question posed to them. You can’t have that level of confidence if people “forget” to update the system, or one person does it “their” way. The only way these systems work to your advantage is by having competence, training and execution.
Employee Training and Reinforcement
Author James Clear famously wrote, “You do not rise to the level of your goals, you fall to the level of your systems.”
Even the best system fails if the people using it aren’t trained. Your process has to be documented and taught. Not just once, but regularly. Everyone, from new hires to veterans, should know these three things:
- What’s next for me to work on?
- Where do I go to find answers?
- What has to be accomplished today?
The culture of winning starts with your team understanding its role and how it contributes to the company’s success.
Your team has to own your processes. Ownership means accountability, and accountability produces results. In a nutshell, a good shop system is simple, complete and pushes you forward. If there is any point where your team has to guess, is allowed to skip steps or make up its own way of doing something, you’ve got a gap to close.
Setting the Standard for your Decorated Apparel Company
We’ve covered the “why” and the “what.” Now comes the hardest part, actually setting the standard. Remember what I wrote earlier? The Roman army didn’t just use a Decempeda, it built its entire system around it, and what made the system work wasn’t simply the tool: it was the training, consistency and culture that made it integral for building an empire.
Your challenge is to create your shop’s Decempeda.
Shop Space: Physical Standards
First, look around your shop. Does everything have a home? When 25 cases of garments arrive, how are they checked in, labeled and staged for production?
Could someone working remotely look up the location for the inventory for an upcoming order in your system, or know that it is missing 30 mediums in light blue?
A good shop system includes the notion of physical order. If your team wastes time searching for materials (ink, thread, garments, hangtags, stickers, etc.) or worse, buys duplicates because things get buried, you have big problems to solve.
Organize your space so everything has a home and then have the discipline to keep it that way. In your system, use bin locations or other identifiers to earmark where every item is located. Train your staff and insist they use the system as intended.
Ordering and Production Processes: Operational Standards
Secondly, define your process standards. What information is mandatory before an order moves forward? Is this being communicated early and often to everyone involved? Who owns each step?
Build your system around:
- Non-negotiable, mandatory order details. Shirt color missing? Zip code absent? Nothing moves forward until the information is clear.
- Shop terminology and language. A “Full Front” imprint is 12-inches wide and is placed 3 inches down from the bottom of the collar. There are thousands more like this. Is everyone trained?
- Standard timelines. When your company says you ship in three business days, when does the clock start ticking—when the order is placed? Or when the art and inventory receiving are complete? Big question: what does your customer think?
- Quality control checkpoints. What has to happen as the order is pushed through each department? How do you incorporate quality control into each step of the process?
The operational goals are consistency and effectiveness. No exceptions. No shortcuts. This is why you need behavioral standards. Everyone follows the same process. No freelancing. No, “I’ve always done it this way.”
And attention all shop owners…typically, the worst culprit when it comes to skipping these steps is you. Don’t do that.
Fix the Friction
What’s broken in your shop processes and not working the way it should? Reminder: systems succeed when they are simple, repeatable and rewarding.
Your ordering process should be the easiest way to do the job correctly. If it feels like extra work, people will start cutting corners. That’s where your next headache will originate.
Here’s a simple rule of thumb: if you are constantly chasing missing information or clarifying mistakes, your system is broken. Identify these friction points and solve them. The smoother your process, the fewer fires you will have to put out.
One way to do this is to build in safeguards. Mistake-proof your system by installing different methods to prevent or catch errors before they reach the next step.
Here are a few you should consider:
- Mandatory fields in software.
- Visual confirmations, like mock-ups or photos.
- Double-checks at each hand-off point.
- Your goal is to make it difficult to make a mistake. What would you need to build to be able to achieve that? Every step along the way should have its own Decempeda. This is the standard that you train, reinforce and improve over time.
When your team knows and trusts the system, your shop will run better, faster and with a lot less stress.
Marching Orders: Next Step’s for Custom Decorated Apparel Shop
In the end, it’s simple. Without a standard, chaos wins. The Roman Empire didn’t spread by guessing. It grew by measuring, training and sticking to a system. Your shop can do the same.
Take a good hard look at your current shop system. Where is the friction? What’s missing? A few steps down the line, what gets confusing for other team members?
After that, start off with just one improvement. Tighten up a checklist. Clean up your intake form. Create a regular training class every Thursday. Then build from there. Remember, establishing and maintaining standards is a continuous process that never ends. It is a habit built on discipline.
Every standard you set and reinforce becomes the backbone of your shop’s success. Build them with care, train them relentlessly and watch your business run smoother than ever.
Marshall Atkinson is a veteran designer, custom apparel decorator, business coach and principal of Atkinson Consulting, (atkinsontshirt.com). This past year he launched the online “Midjourney: Elevating Print Creativity” newsletter, which covers the latest in generative AI (midjourneyexperience.com).
