Most shops working with the alphabroder wholesale apparel and promotional products catalogue still sell it the slow way: a client asks, somebody opens the catalogue, builds a quote by hand, emails it, and waits. The catalogue is not the bottleneck. The path between the catalogue and the order is.

What changes when the catalogue is connected

The difference is not that your client can see products. It is that nobody on your side has to turn a product into an order. The catalogue data, your pricing rules and your decoration limits all sit in one place, so what comes out the other end is a job ready to run rather than a message to answer.

• Product data maintained once, in the store, instead of copied into quotes
• Pricing that follows your rules automatically, including the categories you treat differently
• Decoration options limited to what the garment and your shop can actually do
• Stock and lead time visible to the buyer before they commit, not after
• A production file at the end, not an email thread to reconstruct

Decoration on blanks and volume apparel

This catalogue is typically used for mixed apparel and promo programmes from a single source, and the decoration side is what the store has to get right. For blanks and volume apparel that means:

• Screen printing, where the setup cost decides whether a short run is worth taking at all
• DTF and heat applied transfers, which is what makes a single piece order possible
• Embroidery on the heavier weights, where stabiliser choice matters more than stitch count

The store rules that matter for blanks and volume apparel

These are the rules that decide whether the store gets used twice or used for years. They are specific to this kind of product, and they are where most stores are quietly broken.

• Colour is the trap. Publish the colour names the supplier uses, not your own, or your client orders a colour you cannot actually get.
• Size runs differ by style inside the same catalogue. Attach the real size chart per style rather than one chart for the whole store.
• Set a minimum per decoration method. Screen printing at quantity one loses money no matter how you price it.

Where it sits in your mix

A mixed catalogue is genuinely useful and genuinely dangerous in a store. Useful because a client can buy apparel and promotional items in one basket, which is the whole argument for consolidating with you. Dangerous because apparel and hard goods behave nothing alike: different minimums, different decoration, different lead times, different freight.

How this catalogue actually gets bought

Volume runs where price per piece decides the job, plus a long tail of small reorders that only pay if nobody touches them by hand. Stock is United States based, which affects freight and lead time, and both belong in the store rather than in a conversation after the order is placed.

What it takes to go live

• Your account with the supplier, which stays yours
• The styles you want published, or a category to start from
• Your markup rules, by category rather than one blanket number
• Your decoration methods and their real minimums
• Your logo files and the placements you allow

That is the whole list. Everything after it is configuration, and configuration is either our job or your team's, depending on how you want to work. The licence is in your name in both cases.

Two ways to run it

Your team can build and maintain the store, with training until they can do it without us, or we can build and maintain it while your team watches how it is done. Same platform, same access, same licence in your name. Switching between the two costs nothing in either direction.

Questions

Do I need my own alphabroder account?

Yes, and you should. The supplier relationship, the pricing you have negotiated and the account terms stay yours. We connect the catalogue to your store, we do not sit between you and your supplier.

Can I control which alphabroder products appear?

That is the point. You publish the styles you want to sell, in the categories you want, at the prices you set. A curated store outperforms a full catalogue almost every time, because the buyer is not doing your filtering for you.

How do markups work on alphabroder products?

By rule rather than by hand. You set them per category and they apply automatically as products load. You can override a specific style when you want to, but you are never pricing one product at a time.

Which decoration methods should I offer on blanks and volume apparel?

Only the ones you can actually deliver on that specific garment. Screen printing, where the setup cost decides whether a short run is worth taking at all. The store should make an impossible combination impossible to order, rather than catching it after the fact.

What makes a blanks and volume apparel store different?

Colour is the trap. Publish the colour names the supplier uses, not your own, or your client orders a colour you cannot actually get.

The other catalogues

See every supplier catalogue we wire in, or read what a company store must include before you launch one for a client.