How to plan collection production quantities from B2B pre-orders and DTC sales

Paper orders into Excel — summed by hand

After pre-order, a brand needs to know how many units of each style, colour and size to send to the workshop. Orders often start on paper at trade shows or in email, then someone retypes them into a spreadsheet and totals the rows. Formula errors, missed changes and no single total per variant make the sew decision slow and uncertain.

• retyping orders from paper and email into a sheet
• summing by hand by style, colour and size
• no reliable figure for the workshop after pre-order

Trade shows and email without one total per variant

Pre-order window — the period when boutiques place wholesale orders for a collection before the season.

Production run — a deliberate pool of units the brand sews in one pass for chosen collections and an order window.

BOM (Bill of Materials) — the material consumption recipe for a style (metres, trims), needed to move from units to material demand.

Wholesale B2B collects orders at trade shows, in the showroom and remotely. When an order is first on a card or in a PDF, the total per variant appears only in Excel — after retyping. The more SKUs and post–pre-order changes, the longer the brand waits to decide production.

Orders online — sew quantities visible at once

We solve hand totals with orders placed online from the start — at trade shows and in B2B Space — and a run that collects them into one pool per style, colour and size.

• the order is created in Go4 straight away (the boutique in Space or the brand in the orders panel), with no retyping from paper
• Production Run attaches confirmed lines to the run; Run plan shows demand and how many units still need to go to production
• Workshop orders come from that quantity; material planning needs completed BOMs

After pre-order, what to sew is visible without a separate sheet that sums the channels.

Steps

1. 1Boutiques order in B2B Space, or the brand enters the order in the orders panel on behalf of the boutique (for example at a trade-show table) — lines land in Orders straight away.
2. 2A Production Run is created from orders (collections, date window, Auto-attach).
3. 3Run plan shows Demand per style, colour and size plus In stock; Planned is set.
4. 4Workshop orders are created from the quantity to produce.
5. 5New confirmations in the run window attach to the pool; the plan updates.
6. 6With BOMs filled in, Material Planner calculates materials for the same run.

Example: trade show + Space, collection 0112_ARD, MERU pants Navy.

On your side

• Place boutique orders in Go4 from the start (Space or an entry in the panel at trade shows) so there is no paper-to-Excel step.
• Fill in style BOMs before you calculate materials for the run.
• You set Planned (equal to Demand or with a buffer); Go4 shows demand from online orders.

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