Bespoke vs made-to-measure: how to run both in one tailoring shop

Ready-to-wear is sold off the rail in standard sizes. At most it gets an alteration, a hem or a take-in, after the sale.

Made-to-measure starts from a design you already make. The pattern exists; you change the size to the customer's measurements and let them choose the fabric, colour and small style details. It is quicker to make, easier to price and rarely needs more than one fitting, if any.

Bespoke starts from the customer. The garment is cut for that one person, the style is worked out with them, and the fit is usually checked at a fitting, adjusted and sometimes checked again. It takes longer, uses more of a skilled tailor's time and should cost more.

In TailorSync a made-to-measure garment starts from a product tile at the counter. Every tile has a small sparkle button. Tap it on a design you sell, such as a classic abaya or a kandura stitching service, and the Made to measure form opens with that product and its usual price filled in. Then:

A bespoke garment has no tile to start from, so tap Made to measure on the category rail and type the garment's name, for example "Kandura" or "Wedding bisht". The form is the same as above, with two differences that matter for bespoke work. You type the stitching price for this job rather than taking a list price, and you can choose Later for the measurements when you will measure at the first fitting or work from a sample garment.

Either way, a made-to-measure or bespoke garment is always taken as an order. The payment panel ticks This is an order for you, and you set the delivery date and take the deposit there. On a bespoke commission the deposit should be larger, because the cloth is cut for one person and can't be sold to anyone else if they don't come back.

Made-to-measure suits a price list: each design has a usual price on its product, and the fabric is added on top by the metre. Bespoke needs a quote built from the cost of the cloth, the tailor's hours, your overheads and the margin you want, plus a charge for extra fittings. Keeping bespoke on its own typed price, instead of squeezing it into the price of your nearest rail design, stops the shop from quietly undercharging for its most skilled work. For how to build that quote, see how to price bespoke tailoring.

A made-to-measure order often goes straight from the workshop to Ready. A bespoke order usually stops at Trial for a fitting, moves to Alteration while the tailor adjusts it, and may go back to Trial before it is finished. TailorSync lets you move an order to any status, forward or back, so a second or third fitting is just another status change, and each change is stamped with the time and who made it. A manager has to approve marking an order Delivered or Completed while money is still owed.

When a fitting changes the numbers, update the customer's measurement set on their profile so the next garment starts from the corrected fit. The order keeps its own copy of the measurements it was taken with, so you can still see what the first cut was based on.

Once the order is taken, made-to-measure and bespoke garments go into the same queue. Each garment carries its own stage, Pending, Cutting, Stitching, Finishing, Ready then Delivered, separate from the order's status, and the delivery date turns gold when it is due within three days and red once it is overdue. Give a bespoke commission a higher priority if it needs the bench first. The workshop copy prints each garment's fabric, colour, style and measurements with no prices on it, so the tailor sees what to make and not what the customer paid. For the full picture, see how a tailor order tracking system works.

Both kinds of garment come back sometimes. An order that was Delivered isn't closed until it is Completed, so when a customer brings back last month's abaya to be taken in, you can move that order to Alteration and keep the work on the same record. A quick alteration on something bought elsewhere is an Add alteration line at the counter: a named service with its own price and delivery date.