From a blank product to a print-ready file
Four steps on the surface, five systems underneath. This page is the long version: what you do in the studio, what the shopper sees, what happens between checkout and production, and what you can measure afterwards.
The short version
Four steps.
Zero friction.
From install to live storefront, most merchants are taking personalized orders in under twelve minutes. We've timed it.
Install
One click from the App Store, then drop the theme block onto your product page. Customei reads your catalogue and scaffolds the shop — no CSV, no theme code.
Design
Open the canvas. Drag, type, swatch, warp, curve, import a PSD. Bind the layers to the fields your customer will fill in, and preview against the real runtime.
Publish
One button. The template is content-hashed, pushed to a global CDN and wired into your theme. The previous version stays available for instant rollback.
Sell
Customers personalize live on the storefront and check out in any currency. Print-ready files reach your fulfiller before you have read the order email.
The long version
A — Design
Build the template once
The canvas is where the work happens. It is a real design surface — layers, transforms, masks, warp meshes, brand fonts — with one extra idea: any layer can be bound to something the customer will type, pick or upload.
- Templates and reuse
- A template owns its layers and its mockup frames. Attach it to as many products as it fits; edit it once and every product follows.
- Dynamic image layers
- An image layer that swaps its source based on a field — a flag, a breed, a zodiac sign, a team badge — instead of forty near-identical templates.
- Customer image upload
- Uploads with resolution gates, automatic moderation and an optional review queue. Files land on Cloudflare R2 with signed URLs.
- Photoshop import
- Bring a layered PSD in with exact coordinates, editable text and matched fonts, then bind the layers you want customers to change.
- Warp and mask
- Bend artwork to the real surface with a bezier mesh, then clip it to the actual print area with the pen tool.
- Brand library
- Colours, licensed fonts and images live at shop level and are referenced by every template.
B — Storefront embed
Put it on the product page without touching code
The personalizer is a theme block. You place it, style it and choose how it appears — inline, in a modal, or on its own customization page — and nothing is injected into your theme's source.
- No-code install per platform
- Theme app block on Shopify (OS 2.0). A Gutenberg block and shortcode planned for WooCommerce; Stencil widget planned for BigCommerce; module for Adobe Commerce.
- Theme and brand matching
- Inherits your theme's fonts and colours by default, with a full set of CSS custom properties for when you want to be exact.
- Where it lives
- Inline under the variant picker converts best on simple products; a modal keeps a long option set from pushing the buy button below the fold; a dedicated page suits multi-step configurators.
- Page-speed impact
- Nothing loads until the block scrolls into view. One cached bundle per template, no render-blocking request, and the block reserves its own height so there is no layout shift.
- Pricing that behaves
- Fees are real Shopify line items — so discount codes, taxes and abandoned-cart flows keep working. On Plus, Cart Transform folds the fee into the line item itself.
- Mobile first, genuinely
- The runtime is tested against mobile Safari and mid-range Android, which is where most personalization apps fall over.
C — Order & file automation
The order becomes a print file on its own
Between checkout and production there is normally a person exporting artboards. That person is the bottleneck and the source of most errors. Customei's pipeline replaces the step, not the person's judgement.
- Print-ready file generation
- Lambda workers render layered files at 300dpi with original colour spaces and fonts preserved. Bleed, safe area and cut paths are part of the output, not instructions attached to it.
- Order data mapping
- Every personalized line item carries its option values and a link to its print file, visible in your own admin — so support can answer a question without opening another tool.
- Proofing and approval
- Auto-approve the simple orders; route anything with an upload or a long inscription to a manual review queue before it reaches production.
- Order dashboard
- One list of personalized orders with their design records, render status and delivery state — filterable by product, partner and status.
- Only real orders render
- Rendering is triggered by paid-order webhooks, so cancelled and fraudulent orders never consume a render or reach a printer.
- Re-render on demand
- Fixed a font or a print area? Re-render an existing order's file without asking the customer to reorder.
D — Fulfilment & production
Files reach whoever actually makes the thing
Customei does not want to own your supply chain. It wants the artwork to arrive at your production partner in the format they asked for, automatically, whether that partner is a POD network or your own press in the back room.
- Bring your own fulfilment
- Delivery by S3 bucket, direct API, signed URL or webhook. In-house production is a first-class case, not a fallback.
- Partner integrations
- Direct integrations with POD networks are in progress — tell us who you produce with and it moves up the list.
- Print specs by product type
- Resolution, bleed, colour handling and cut paths differ per category. Each product-type page lists its own, and the full tables live in the docs.
- Multi-vendor routing
- Route print files by vendor, product type or tag, so apparel reaches one partner and drinkware another with nobody sorting a queue.
- Verifiable handoff
- Delivery state is recorded per file, so a missing order is a question you can answer rather than one you have to investigate.
E — Merchant dashboard
Run it without opening a spreadsheet
Setup, moderation and the numbers that tell you whether any of this worked — in the same admin, next to the templates they describe.
- Product setup
- Define print areas, attach templates and option sets, set fee rules. Attach in bulk by collection or tag rather than product by product.
- Design moderation
- Content rules on free text, automatic checks on uploads, and a review queue for the orders you want a human to see.
- Customization analytics
- Customization rate, AOV lift against the static equivalent, abandoned designs, and which fields people give up on.
- Abandoned designs
- A design record exists before checkout, so you can see what people configured and did not buy — the single most useful list in the app.
- Team and roles
- Designers work in the canvas, support reads orders, and nobody needs the credentials to publish.
Get started
See it on your
own catalogue.
Install Customei, attach an option set to one product, and place a test order. Twelve minutes, a 14-day trial, no card.