Products, and the three ways buyers order them

A product is one thing a buyer can order from your shop page: a name, a price, photos, and the choices you offer, like colors and sizes. You add and edit them on the Products page.

The setting that matters most is the one people skip. Every product is set to one of three ordering modes, and that mode decides what your buyer is asked when they order. Get it right and the order arrives complete. Get it wrong and you are back to messaging someone to find out what they actually wanted.

What kind of item it is

When you click Add a product, the first thing Broidry asks is what kind of item it is: a hat, a tee, a sweatshirt, a blanket, a tote, and so on. That answer is the item's shape, and it decides which spots a design can go in, because a hat has a front and a sweatshirt has a chest, two sleeves and a back. It is not the exact garment — you pick that, a Richardson 112 or a Gildan 18000, inside the product under Item options.

If you get it wrong, or you change your mind later, open the product and change the Item type menu near the top. Your name, price, photos and description all stay. The only thing that changes is which spots you can put a design in, and any spot that does not exist on the new shape drops off, which is why a sweatshirt's sleeve spots are not there after you switch it to a hat.

Products that come in from an Etsy or Square import arrive with the item type already guessed from the name of the listing. Check that column in the import preview before you bring them in, because the guess is only reading words — a name that does not say what the item is, like "Game Day Ready," has nothing to go on and is filed under Everything else.

The three modes

"Buyers add names or words" is the normal custom-embroidery mode. The buyer types their wording, picks a font and a thread color if you offer those choices, and confirms the spelling before submitting. Use it for name sweatshirts, monogrammed totes, personalized anything.

"Buyers send a logo" is for business work. The buyer uploads their logo file instead of typing words, which is what a team, a salon, or a contractor ordering shirts actually needs. Their file arrives attached to the order.

"Buyers get it exactly as shown" is for a piece that is not personalized at all — a finished design you stitch the same way every time, or an item you have already made and want to sell. The buyer picks their size and color and orders it as photographed. Broidry changes the buyer-facing wording to match: the button reads Order this piece instead of Personalize yours, and the form stops asking for wording and fonts, because there is nothing for them to type. If you want buyers to be able to choose the thread color anyway — the same design stitched in their team or school colors — turn on "Let buyers pick the thread color" in that listing's Item options. Everything else a buyer could have chosen goes quiet: the wording, the fonts, the spots, and the reference-photo upload, which grays out so it cannot be switched on for a piece where a photo would change nothing.

How this product is made

Not everything an embroidery shop sells is embroidered. If you also print, engrave, or do something else, say so on the product itself — the editor has a row called How this product is made, with embroidered, printed, engraved, and other. Every product you already have is set to embroidered, so nothing changes until you change it.

That one setting rewrites what the buyer reads. A printed piece never says "stitched" anywhere: not on the order form, not on the review step, not on the confirmation page, and not on the quote line, which says printed instead of embroidery. The "real embroidery, never printed" promise also comes off that listing on its own.

It follows the order out of the app too. The emails your customer gets say printed, not stitched: the estimate promises nothing is printed until they have approved it, and their payment receipt puts them on your print schedule. So do the ready-made messages on the order page — the proof waiting on them is a print proof, not a stitch-out.

One more place, and it is the one nobody thinks to check. If you have not written your own search description on the Storefront page, Broidry writes one for you, and it used to call every shop an embroidery shop. Now it reads what you actually sell. A shop whose products are all printed shows up as Custom Printing; a shop that stitches anything at all is still called embroidery, because that is the fairer description of a shop doing both.

It changes the price too, because your rate card counts stitches and a print has none to count. A printed or engraved product charges the price you typed on it, plus any size or add-on charges you set, exactly the way a product sold as shown does — your rate card is never asked about it. On the owner side, a quote built from that product opens with Price this item myself already on, so you type what the job is worth instead of a stitch count.

The embroidery-only choices — appliqué, 3D puff, and thread color — only apply to embroidered products, so they stay put when you mark something printed.

The one thing it takes AWAY is a time estimate. Your Schedule works out how long a job will take by dividing its stitch count by your machine speed, and a printed piece has no stitches to count. Rather than show you a finish date built on a number nobody measured, Broidry shows none: the order sits on your list marked no time estimate, and it does not book machine hours or push the stitched work behind it. Your ship date still counts, so a printed order that is past its date still shows up as overdue.

Colors and sizes belong to the garment

Under Item options you check the garments a product is offered on, and right below that you fill in the colors and the sizes it comes in. Those two lists are shared by every garment you checked, but a buyer never picks from them the way you see them. A buyer picks their garment first, and is then offered only the colors that garment comes in and the sizes it is made in. If your listing offers a Gildan 18000 and a Comfort Colors 1566, someone who picks the Gildan cannot be sold Salmon, because Gildan does not make it.

So the click-to-add swatches are listed under the name of the garment they belong to, one row per garment, and under your chosen colors Broidry writes out what a buyer actually sees for each one. The sizes card does the same thing, which is how one listing sells youth sizes on the garment that has them and adult-only on the garment that does not.

One line there is worth reading closely. If it says a garment shows every color it comes in, none of the colors you picked exist on that garment, and Broidry falls back to its whole chart rather than leave a buyer with nothing to choose. Either add a color that garment really comes in, or take that garment off the listing.

Placements: where the stitching goes

Each product holds a list of placements — the spots on the garment you are willing to stitch, like the left chest, the full front, a sleeve, or the back of a hat. Each placement can either take whatever the buyer types, or hold a set design you always stitch there.

Placements are how you keep an order honest. If you only stitch the left chest on a particular polo, list only the left chest, and no buyer can order a full back you were not planning to make.

A placement can also carry its own price, and you choose what that price counts. Next to the extra charge there is a dropdown: once per garment, per name they add, per letter stitched, per word stitched, or per inch. Pick per name and a buyer who types three names is charged three times the extra — the number moves as they type, so a four-name tote and a one-name tote are not the same price by accident. Per inch reads the number the buyer types into that spot's box.

Choice lists: one question, your answers

Some products need one more answer that is not wording or placement: which dog breed, which school, which sport. A choice list is that question, written once with all its answers, and attached to any products that need it. The buyer picks from your list in the order form, the answer is required before they can submit, and it prints exactly as written on the order and the run sheet — so "Golden Retriever" arrives spelled the way you spell it, not the way a text message does.

The "somewhere else" option

Underneath the placements there is a checkbox called "Let buyers describe a spot I didn't list." Leave it on and a buyer who wants something in a spot you did not think of can describe it in their own words. Turn it off and they can only pick from your list.

There is a real trade-off here, so choose on purpose. Leaving it on catches orders you would otherwise lose, and it is where some of the best custom work comes from. Turning it off means every order that arrives is something you already know how to make and price. New shops usually leave it on; busy shops usually turn it off.

When you do not want buyers picking a spot at all

Some products only ever get stitched one way, and asking the buyer where the name goes is one more thing for them to get wrong. At the top of "Where can people put their design?" there is a control called "Do buyers choose the spot?" Switch it to "It always goes in one spot" and pick the spot, and the whole question disappears from the order form.

Your buyers still type their wording and still pick a font and a thread color if you offer those. The only thing they are not asked is where it goes, because you have already answered it. That one setting handles the escape hatch as well, so there is nothing else to remember to switch off.

A hat never shows this control, because a hat only has one spot to begin with and there was never a question to ask.

Priced, or Quote me

Separate from the ordering mode, every product is either Priced or Quote me. Priced means the number is on the product and a buyer can order it without waiting on you. Quote me means there is no number yet — the buyer asks, and you send them a price.

Pick Priced, type your number into the "from $" box beside it, and that is the price. Buyers pay it, plus any size upcharge or paid add-on you set further down the product, and nothing comes back to you to quote. Your shop's pricing settings do not recalculate it and your shop minimum does not top it up. This works the same whether buyers personalize the piece or get it exactly as shown, so you never have to choose between putting a price on something and letting a customer put their own name on it.

One thing to know before you pick Quote me: it depends on a shop-wide setting. If "Let buyers request a quote" is turned off, a Quote me product is hidden from your shop page, because there would be no way for a buyer to ask you anything. You do not have to go looking for that setting. The product editor tells you it is happening, right on the product, and gives you a button there called "Let buyers request a quote" — click it and this product, and every other Quote me product, appear on your shop page. If you would rather sell this one at a set price, type a price above instead.

Changing several products at once

When more than one product is on your Products page, a button appears at the top called Change or delete several. Click it, then click the products you want, and a panel opens with the settings that are safe to change in a batch: whether they show on your shop page, your return policy, appliqué, which fonts they offer, a price change across all of them, a sale percentage, and a tag to put on all of them or take off all of them. You can also delete the ones you picked. It exists because a shop that imports forty products from Etsy should not have to open forty editors to make them all live.

That panel is also where you add one photo to all of them. If you have made a thread color chart, a size guide, or a care card that belongs on every product rather than on one, choose it under Add a photo to all of them and it goes onto each product you picked. It is added after the photos each product already has, and it never becomes the cover photo, so what your customers see first on your shop page is still the product itself.

A product holds eight of your own photos, but a photo you add this way does not count against that, so it is added even to a product whose photos are already full. That matters most right after an import, because products brought over from another shop usually arrive holding a full set. Adding the same photo a second time does nothing, so if you are not sure whether a batch went through, you can run it again without ending up with the chart twice.

Before a product goes live

1. 1Add at least one real photo. A product without a photo still works, but a buyer will not order a blank square.
2. 2Set the ordering mode to match how you actually make this piece.
3. 3List every placement you are willing to stitch, and no others.
4. 4Decide whether to allow the "somewhere else" option on this product.
5. 5Open your own shop page and order the product yourself, all the way through the form. You will find the missing question faster than any checklist will.

It says live, but it is not on my shop page

Switching a product on is not quite the same as putting it on your shop page. Two other settings take a switched-on product off it, and the product tile now tells you when one of them is doing that. It says Not on your shop page right on the picture, the line under the product says why, and opening the product explains which setting to change.

The first is a checkbox in the product called Keep this off my shop page. It is meant for a one-time piece you only want to send to one person, so the product works by direct link and nowhere else. Uncheck it and the product joins your shop page.

The second only affects products set to Quote me. If your shop has quote requests switched off, those products come off your shop page, because there is nothing for a buyer to do at the end of them. Turn Custom quote requests back on from your Storefront page, under What's on the page, or give the product a price instead.