How Criquet Shirts Scaled Custom Apparel with Shopify Collective

Overview

Criquet Shirts began as a small direct-to-consumer brand focused on one goal: make polos that look classic but feel better than anything else on the market. When their founders, two lifelong friends, saw demand for limited-edition and custom-embroidered pieces, they turned to Shopify Collective. By creating a private “supplier” store for on-demand products and tying it to a New Jersey fulfillment center, they now handle standard inventory and custom orders in parallel—no manual reroutes or extra software needed.

The Challenge

Mixing ready stock with made-to-order items led to routing errors, miscounts in warehouse picks, and awkward delays at checkout. Criquet’s team wanted a way to keep their core catalog on one storefront but offer short-run drops and custom embroidery behind the scenes, without confusing customers or overloading operations.

The Solution

With Shopify Collective, Criquet built a hidden “Criquet Custom” store. That store is their supplier for the visible shop. They upload all custom styles and licensed collegiate designs there. When a customer buys a made-to-order polo, the order comes through Collective, routes automatically to the correct vendor (their NJ hub) and triggers on-demand embroidery or print. Meanwhile, regular polos ship from their main inventory without any hiccups.

Key Results

This setup cut routing mistakes to nearly zero and let Criquet test limited designs without stocking bulk. In the first months, 4% of custom purchases were from brand-new customers, and 7% of returning buyers chose a custom design. Their average order value rose as customers added patches, monograms, or exclusive colorways that never sit on shelves.

Looking Ahead

Criquet plans to add third-party brands into Collective, offering an expanded curated shop of like-minded labels. By keeping fulfillment inside Shopify, they avoid extra platforms, letting them focus on design and customer experience while operations run smoothly in the background.