Orders and customers

Group orders: one link for a whole team

5 minute read

A group order is the job every embroiderer knows: a team, a class, a church group, or an office wants the same piece in twenty different sizes. Done by hand it is a spreadsheet, a group chat, and someone chasing people for money.

Broidry turns it into one link. You pick a product you already sell, set a price per person and a closing date, and share the link. Each member opens it, picks their own size and color, types their own name if the piece is personalized, and pays for their own spot. You are not collecting money from anyone.

Setting one up

  1. 1Open Group orders and start a new one from a product you already have on your shop page.
  2. 2Set the price each person pays and the date the group closes. The closing date is what protects you: after it passes, no one else can join, so you are not still taking orders while you are trying to stitch.
  3. 3Share the link. There is also a separate organizer link you can hand to the coach, the room parent, or whoever is actually herding the group, so they can watch it fill up without needing an account.
  4. 4Watch it fill. The group order page shows who has joined and who has paid, so you always know where it stands.
A group order for team hats: the share link, the per-person price, the close date, and the locked-in list of paid members.
A filling group order. Only the paid members are locked in, and they are the only pieces that reach the production sheet.

A spot is not real until it is paid

A member who starts the form but never pays does not count as part of the group, and never appears on anything you stitch from. Only paid spots are real. It means the number you see is the number of pieces you are actually making, not the number of people who said they were in.

That holds all the way down to your board. Someone who fills in the form and then closes the card page leaves nothing behind at all — no order for you to look at, no name on your list, and nobody for you to go chase. The spot appears the moment their card clears and not a second earlier. The same is true of a drop cart: the whole cart shows up together once it is paid for.

Stitching the batch

When the group closes, open its production sheet. It lists only the paid members, batched by garment, then color, then size — so you hoop once and sew a whole size run at a time instead of jumping around.

Every line still carries the member's name along with their wording, placement, and thread color, so you can run the batch efficiently and still bag each finished piece by the right person's name. Broidry also emails the paid members when the group closes, so nobody is left wondering whether their order went through.

Note: A group order that expires without enough members is not a disaster to untangle by hand. Broidry closes it on its date, tells you what it ended up with, and lets you reopen it if you want to give the group more time.

Running it as a fundraiser: the organizer's cut

Most studios, schools, and teams say yes to a group order faster when the group earns something from it. Broidry lets you set an organizer's cut: a dollar amount from every item that goes back to the group running the sale. Set it when you create the group order, or edit it later, in the box under the price per person.

The member's price does not change. If a hoodie is $38 and the cut is $3, every member still pays $38, and $3 of each one is yours to pass along to the organizer. The sign-up page tells members that $3 of every item goes back to their group, which is a reason to buy, not a fee. Your group order page shows what the group has earned so far, and the organizer's own progress link shows them the same number.

When the order closes, the total shows up in two places: as a payout line at the top of the production sheet, with the organizer's name and contact, and in an email to the organizer saying what the group earned. Getting the money to them is between you and them — a check, Venmo, a credit on their next order. Broidry keeps the number straight so nobody has to work it out from a spreadsheet.

Note: The cut has to be less than the price per person, since it comes out of your side of that price. Broidry will not save a cut that leaves you nothing.

Two settings worth knowing about

Show on my shop page puts the group order on your public shop page, so it is not only reachable by the link you send. Good for a community run anyone may join — a school-spirit piece, a town fundraiser. Leave it off for a private team.

Ship to the organizer sends the whole batch to one address — the coach, the room parent — instead of asking every member for their own. One box, one shipping cost, and the organizer hands the pieces out.

Note: Selling a whole themed collection rather than one product? That is a drop — several products under one closing date, with one cart for the buyer. The guide called Drops: a themed collection with one deadline covers it.