My T-shirt store: when sales outgrow delivery capacity

Initially, we prepared garments and tried designs for ourselves. We then thought there might be interest beyond our circle and launched the store. There were two of us, and I was still combining the project with my job.

That familiarity with the product helped us start, but it did not replace an operational strategy. Knowing how to make a garment did not yet answer how many we could produce weekly, how to plan orders or what would happen if demand increased.

In the recording, I report cumulative revenue of more than €80,000 in under six months. That is the figure I share about that experience; revenue is not profit. The point of the case is precisely that selling more did not resolve what was going wrong behind the scenes.

We delegated advertising and reinvested in machinery, but production remained highly manual. Black Friday and Christmas activity brought significant delays. There were more orders, but we had not prepared an adequate operational response to that volume.

In the video, I list gaps I recognise more clearly now: weekly capacity, delivery times, delegation and growth planning. We worked through orders as they came in, without a sufficiently clear view of what we could handle.

To apply the lesson to another store, identify its bottleneck. It might be manufacturing, preparation, shipping or customer support. If increasing demand only adds work at that point, capacity needs improving before accelerating further.

The experience made me deal with suppliers, shipping, customers and administration. These business activities are not always visible when designing a product or campaign. An order creates a responsibility that continues after payment.

A useful practice is to draw the entire order journey and assign times and owners to each stage. Then compare it with your actual volume. That turns a general lesson about careful growth into a concrete decision about what you can promise and deliver.