Customer case study

A custom-jewellery Shopify store moved production off spreadsheets — and scaled to 1,651 orders a month on Route to Ship

Measured March–July 2026 · figures pulled from the Route to Ship production database · last verified 2026-07-19

Full disclosure: this is Route to Ship's founding store — the custom-jewellery and personalised-products business Route to Ship was originally built for. Every figure below comes directly from the production database, and reflects orders routed through Route to Ship (a subset of the store's total Shopify volume). We'll publish independent customer studies as merchants opt in.

The short version

A Shopify store selling custom-design jewellery and personalised products ran its multi-step production — engraving, quality control, packing — on spreadsheets, Zapier, and a stack of third-party tools. With many hands in one document, the spreadsheet corrupted more than once. After moving production onto Route to Ship, the team ramped from 6 production orders in its first month to 1,651 by month four, completing 26,000+ production steps across 15 departments — with no spreadsheet in the loop.

The numbers (from the production database)

3,900+
production orders processed
26,000+
production steps completed
15
production departments
~13
people on the production floor

Adoption ramp: orders processed per month

As more of the floor moved onto Route to Ship, monthly production volume climbed steadily — peaking at 1,651 orders in month four:

MonthProduction orders
Mar 20266
Apr 2026185
May 20261,235
Jun 20261,651

Before and after

Before

  • Shared spreadsheets + Zapier + several third-party tools
  • The order spreadsheet corrupted more than once with the whole team editing it
  • No live view of where each order sat in production
  • Customers had no way to see production progress

After (on Route to Ship)

  • The whole production pipeline runs from paid Shopify order to shipped
  • Each worker sees exactly what's on their bench; managers get a live floor view
  • Orders auto-route into the right department queue by product tag
  • A branded customer tracking page shows production progress

How these figures were measured

  • Source: the store's own records in the Route to Ship production database.
  • Date range: first production order 20 March 2026 through 19 July 2026 (~4 months).
  • "Production orders" = orders routed into a Route to Ship production pipeline — a subset of the store's total Shopify order volume.
  • "Production steps completed" = individual pipeline step-runs marked done (e.g. engraving, QC, packing).
  • Caveats: this is the founder's own store, disclosed above; month four (July) is still in progress at time of writing.
  • Last verified: 2026-07-19.

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