Scaling a clothing brand from 5 to 40 employees

The situation

Pleated Up is a clothing brand that was scaling fast, from 5 employees to 40. The informal systems that worked at small scale were breaking apart.

They sell both readymade and made-to-order garments. Orders come through their Shopify store and through chat conversations. Each order can have multiple items with different customizations, and those items need to be routed correctly: some to inventory, some to cutting and stitching.

At 5 people, you can keep this in your head. At 40, you can't.

What I built

This wasn't a UI design project. There was no Figma file. I designed and built a system made of connected tools and custom scripts.

Order sync. I wrote a custom script that pulls every line item from Shopify into a Google Sheet with all order details, customization specs, and product information. Each row is one garment, not one order, because that's how the workshop floor thinks.

Workshop tracking. Additional columns track cutting date, stitching date, tailor assignment, and shipping provider. I set up saved filter views so each team sees exactly their queue.

Garment detail cards. I wrote another script that generates a PDF with a small printed card for each garment. That card gets printed, attached to the fabric, and stays with the piece through cutting, stitching, quality check, and packing. It's the physical thread that keeps everything traceable.

Why it worked

The old system relied on memory and verbal communication. At scale, that breaks fast, and the error rate was 5%.

The new system works because every garment has its own identity from the moment the order comes in. The information follows the garment physically (via the printed card) and digitally (via the sheet). Nobody has to remember anything. They just read the card.

• Error rates dropped from 5% to 0.5%
• Order processing became 3x faster
• Reduced 30 man hours a day
• The system scales without adding complexity

Design beyond the screen

I could have approached this as a UI project and built an app. But the team is in a tier-4 city, they're comfortable with Shopify and Google Sheets, and the workshop floor needs printed paper, not another screen.

The right solution was the one that fit how people already work. Sometimes that means a custom script and a well-structured spreadsheet, not a polished interface.