Made-to-order commerce

Your product is not a SKU. It is a set of rules.

Ordinary commerce assumes a product is a code with a price beside it. Nothing you manufacture works that way. Options constrain each other, the price depends on how many because setup is spread across the run, the artwork has to sit inside an approved area, and a hundred rows of names all have to be right before anything is cut, stitched or printed.

Ironbark holds those rules, applies them while the buyer is still choosing, and hands the factory a file it can run without anyone retyping it.

Open the customer portal See the engine run

Live specification

Decoration width

85 mm

Production file — one row per unit

—rules evaluated on every change, before an order can be placed

—production columns generated, mapped per machine

3manufacturing categories running on one engine, no forks

0figures on this page that were typed in by hand

One shirt becomes 593 product codes.

A shirt in five colours, nine sizes, four decoration methods and six placements is not one product with options — to a system built around stock codes it is over a thousand separate products, and that is before anyone types a name on one. So the catalogue gets simplified until it no longer describes what you sell, and the difference is made up by email.

What a stock-code system expects

A fixed list of parts

One code, one price, one recipe. To offer a second placement you create a second product. Every combination has to exist before it can be sold, and the ones nobody thought of cannot be ordered at all.

SKU PL210-NVY-L-EMB-LC price 34.21 garment polo, navy, L decoration left chest — and 592 more codes for the same shirt

What made-to-order needs

A set of rules, evaluated per order

One product family. The options, the constraints between them, the price effects and the columns the factory needs are all data. A new placement is a row someone edits, not a release someone ships.

when deco = dtg and fabric = synthetic then error "cannot print on synthetic" when garment = hi-vis then block heat-applied — voids AS/NZS 4602.1

Every step here changes the next.

This is not a set of screens that look related. A decision taken in one place is visible in the next, because they all read the same rules and the same state. Walk it yourself — every step below is a working screen.

An enquiry arrives

enquiry.html → admin/pipeline.html

A business asks for an account on the public site. It lands in the pipeline as a qualified lead with what they said they needed.

Submit the form and watch it appear in the CRM.

They configure, inside their own rules

portal/configure.html

Their brand profile is already loaded. Colours outside it cannot be picked, the chest mark is capped at the width their brand manual allows, and the price shows its full working as they change things.

Try to choose a colour they have not approved.

The staff list becomes the order

portal/roster.html

Paste a roster straight out of a spreadsheet. Columns are matched by name, sizes normalised, and every row that will not work is called out individually — before anything is made.

Paste a list with a bad size in it and see which row fails.

Money and permission are checked together

portal/cart.html

Personal allowance, then cost-centre budget, then approval thresholds. The button says exactly what will happen when it is pressed, and who it goes to.

Push the quantity up until it trips a different approver.

The proof is signed

portal/proofs.html

Versioned, annotated, and kept. The most expensive mistake in this industry is a run of four hundred garments nobody looked at properly.

Approve one and watch the order move into the schedule.

The planner builds a run

admin/production.html

Orders are grouped by machine, the run is sequenced, and the export profile is chosen — or edited, because every machine wants a different file.

Change a column and see the exact bytes before you download.

The floor runs it, and it comes back

floor/queue.html → portal/orders.html

A different surface entirely — dark, high contrast, big targets for gloved hands. Jobs advance, and the customer sees it happen. Then they reorder it in two clicks.

Advance a job and check the customer's order screen.

Validation that fires at checkout has failed.

A message at the end of a process tells a buyer they wasted their time. These rules are applied while the choice is being made, so the wrong order cannot be assembled in the first place. Every one below is live in the configurator right now.

when garment = hi-vis
and deco in (dtf, dtg)
then error

Heat kills certification. A transfer press over retroreflective tape destroys it, and the garment stops meeting AS/NZS 4602.1 — which the wearer only finds out on a night shift. The method is blocked, with the reason stated.

when method = uv print
and material = stainless
then error

Ink will not key to bare steel. It looks perfect leaving the factory and lifts within a month. The system offers laser engraving or an anodised plate instead.

when lines = 3
and height < 25 mm
then error

Three lines need the room. The characters-per-line figure is solved from the plate size and the number of lines, so a badge that cannot hold the text is caught while it is still a choice.

when spot UV = yes
and finish = gloss
then error

Gloss on gloss is invisible. Spot UV works by contrast against a matte or soft-touch surface. On gloss the customer pays for a finish nobody can see.

brand profile:
colour in (navy, black,
certified fluoro)

Brand rules are locks, not guidance. A customer's approved palette, artwork and maximum mark size come from their profile and are enforced in the interface. Off-brand orders are not policed after the fact; they cannot be built.

screen print setup
= $45 per colour
dtf setup = $0

Advice you can check. The panel prices every alternative side by side and names the exact quantity where one overtakes the other — for this configuration, screen print passes DTF at — units.

Thirty-three screens across five surfaces.

Everything below is built and open. Nothing is a placeholder, and nothing is behind a login — pick any screen and it works.