Website To Manufacturer

[TattenhamCorner]

Good morning forum, I hope all is well with you.

I would like to ask a question that involves understanding the process between a website and a manufacturer and how best to communicate the order.

I’ve had a website designed 2 months ago which is waiting to go live. The website is in layman terms, is an interactive platform that allows you to design your own socks - yes socks! you can choose from 24 patterns, 5 different materials and over 256 unique colours.

The problem we’re having is going from the technological side of things to actually driving the business straight to the supply chain and making it happen. Where we’re stuck is being able to sync the orders with the manufacturers who can start producing the product within minutes of receiving an order.

At the moment, we would like some help from anyone with experience in the manufacturing industry to help us understand how they would operate and what is needed from us in terms of communicating the orders to their plant.

 

[Mr D]

Do you mean dropshipping model of sales?

 

[mattk]

Looking at this from a purely IT point of view, typically you would ask the downstream system (in your case the manufacturer) what format they require the data in. You would then collect the data and transform the data at your end (which you have control over) into the format the manufacturer requires.

Therefore, my question would be have you asked the manufacturer what how and in what format they want to receive your designs?

 

[TargetICT]

I believe what Matt said above applies. Do they want a .psd? .cdr? .svg? a high resolution PDF of png?
Your developer can easily include a function to take the customer order, transform it to the format the Manufacturer works with and mail or upload it to them.