Hit 50 custom dress orders in a month and nearly lost my mind

I do small batch bridesmaid dresses from my home studio, and somehow 50 orders came in during October. Has anyone else hit a crazy order milestone and realized you needed to totally rethink your workflow?

3 comments

3 Comments

williams.jenny16d ago

Hard disagree with Torres. Workflow tweaks can save way more than ten minutes. Batching all similar cuts together shaved an hour off my production day. Stacking orders by color or fabric type before starting is a no-brainer. Fifty orders is a lot but small changes add up fast.

william_torres17d ago

I did 62 custom orders last November for holiday party dresses (which is a nightmare in itself) and honestly I don't think the workflow is the main problem here. You might be pushing yourself past a healthy limit for a one-person shop. No amount of reorganizing your cutting table or batching your sewing steps fixes the fact that 50 orders is a ton for one person in 30 days. Maybe the real fix is capping how many you take or raising your prices so the crazy months are worth the burnout. I get that we all want to say yes to every client, but your sanity matters more than hitting some arbitrary number.

the_lucas16d agoMost Upvoted

Respectfully, I see it differently. Adding a hard cap or jacking up prices might actually hurt you more than the burnout does, especially if those orders are keeping the lights on the rest of the year. Sometimes the fix isn't saying no more often, it's finding one or two small workflow tweaks that cut your time per order by 10 minutes.