Applies to Cmsmart Custom Apparel Store 2.0.0, Cmsmart Product Designer 2.18.4 (formerly NBDesigner) and Cmsmart Stores Blocks 2.1.3 · Updated October 2026. Store Setup v2 installs this store live on your domain, with no WooCommerce “coming soon” page in the way.

In short

  • Outcome: a complete custom t-shirt WooCommerce store setup — branding, a sample catalogue, the Cmsmart Product Designer and payments all working together.
  • How it works: Store Setup v2 installs Cmsmart Custom Apparel Store 2.0.0 with its demo content in minutes; you then brand it, open one product’s Cmsmart Product Designer tab, and connect payments and shipping.
  • What it takes: about an hour, a WordPress and WooCommerce-ready host, and a Cmsmart Fullstore plan to activate the store on your domain.

A custom t-shirt WooCommerce store setup usually means weeks of plugin work before a shop can sell. Cmsmart Custom Apparel Store is a ready-made WooCommerce store for print shops selling custom tees, hoodies and team wear designed online, installed live with a sample catalogue and the Cmsmart Product Designer wired up for a real order in about an hour.

What Does Selling Custom Apparel the Old Way Really Cost You?

Cmsmart Custom Apparel Store replaces email quoting and spreadsheet size lists with an online designer and printing options on the product page, so buyers get a price and place an order themselves instead of waiting on your team.

Print shops selling custom apparel by phone and email run into the same problems:

  • Team and event orders arrive as size lists in a spreadsheet, re-keyed by hand.
  • Customers cannot see where their logo will sit on the garment before they commit.
  • Print methods and quantities are priced by email, one quote at a time.
  • A blank WooCommerce catalogue means building options and a designer from scratch first.
  • Every extra round of email is a chance to lose the buyer to someone faster.

Put a number on it: hours your team spends weekly on sizing and print-location questions, multiplied by your hourly cost, plus the orders you lose to buyers who give up waiting for a quote. That total is what the status quo costs you every month.

What Would Your First Custom Apparel Order Look Like?

On Cmsmart Custom Apparel Store, a buyer picks a garment, places their own artwork in the Cmsmart Product Designer, sees the price change as they add print locations or quantity, and checks out — no quote email required.

Cmsmart Custom Apparel Store home page with a blue Print Yourself hero and a Start Designing bar
The storefront a buyer sees first: a Print Yourself hero and a direct path into the designer.

Example scenario. A buyer opens your store at 9pm, picks a hoodie, drags their logo onto the front print area in the Cmsmart Product Designer, and adds enough quantity for their team. The price updates as they go, and they check out through the WooCommerce block checkout. By morning, their design and chosen sizes are already sitting in your Orders list — no email thread, no re-typing.

How Does Cmsmart Build a Ready-to-Sell Apparel Store?

Cmsmart Custom Apparel Store pairs a WooCommerce storefront with the Cmsmart Product Designer and its Printing Options, so every demo product already has a design area, a print method and a price before you touch a setting.

Five pieces come together in the store you install:

  • Storefront theme. Cmsmart Custom Apparel Store 2.0.0 on parent theme Cmsmart Stores 2.0.0, edited in the WordPress site editor — header, footer and home page are block-based template parts.
  • Sample catalogue. 22 demo products across T-Shirts, Hoodies & Long Sleeves, Women’s Tees & Tanks, Team & Event Wear and Caps & Bags, with the pages and menus that link to them.
  • Cmsmart Product Designer (formerly NBDesigner) 2.18.4. Enabled on the demo products with named design areas — Front, Back, Left sleeve, Right sleeve.
  • Printing Options. The plugin’s “NBD options” box on each product carries the print method, print locations and quantity pricing shown to the buyer.
  • Print-ready output. When a buyer finishes designing, Cmsmart Product Designer renders a print-ready PDF that matches the order, so the file your production team opens is the design the buyer actually bought.
  • WooCommerce checkout. The block-based WooCommerce cart and checkout, with payments and shipping set up separately.
Cmsmart Product Designer settings on a WooCommerce product: Front, Back, Left sleeve and Right sleeve design areas
The “Setting Cmsmart” box on a demo product, with front, back and sleeve design areas already named.
NBD options box on a product with Printing Option enabled and an Edit option button
Printing Options (the plugin’s “NBD options” box) is where print method, locations and quantity pricing live for this product.

Cmsmart insight: keep the demo product’s design-area names (Front, Back, Left sleeve, Right sleeve) when you build your own products. Buyers and your production team both read the order the same way, and you avoid relabelling every printing-option rule you copy from the sample product.

What’s the Business Value of Launching on Cmsmart Custom Apparel Store?

Cmsmart Custom Apparel Store turns setup time into selling time: instead of building a designer and pricing engine, you spend the hour on your own branding and catalogue, and the store can already take a priced order.

BenefitHow it shows up in your businessKPI to track
No quote-by-email delayBuyers get a price on the product page instead of waiting for a replyTime from first visit to paid order
Fewer re-keyed team ordersSize and quantity choices arrive on the order, not in a spreadsheetAdmin minutes per team/event order
Design seen before paymentBuyers place their own artwork on the garment and see it before they payCart-to-checkout completion rate
One flow for design and checkoutThe designer, pricing and WooCommerce checkout sit on the same product pageCheckout abandonment rate

ROI worksheet (use your own numbers):

  • Hours your team currently spends per week on apparel quotes × your hourly staff cost = weekly quoting cost today.
  • Orders per month you estimate you lose to slow quotes × your average order value = monthly revenue at risk.
  • Hours it would take you to build an online designer and a printing-option price list from a blank WooCommerce theme = the setup time this store replaces.
Cmsmart Overview dashboard on a freshly set up store, showing revenue, orders and in-production counts from the sample catalogue
Cmsmart › Overview on a freshly set up store — the same revenue, orders and production widgets track your real catalogue once you replace the samples.

The opportunity is real at the market level: the global print-on-demand market was valued at $10.8 billion in 2025, with apparel the largest category at a 39.5% revenue share (Grand View Research, 2025). Keeping buyers in one flow matters just as much: the documented average online cart abandonment rate is 70.22% across 50 studies (Baymard Institute), and a quote-by-email step is one more place to lose a buyer.

Generic WooCommerce themeCmsmart Custom Apparel Store
Online product designerNot included; a separate plugin and its setup come firstCmsmart Product Designer 2.18.4 already enabled on the sample products
Print pricing on the product pageYou build option fields and pricing logic yourselfPrinting Options (print method, locations, quantity pricing) pre-configured on the demo catalogue
Apparel catalogue to start fromBlank catalogue; every product built from scratch22 sample products across T-Shirts, Hoodies, Women’s Tees, Team & Event Wear and Caps & Bags
Team and event ordering copyYou write your own bulk-order messaging and pagesA dedicated Team & Event Wear hero and category, with quantity-pricing copy built in
BrandingWordPress site editor, generic block themeSame WordPress site editor, with header, footer and home page already styled for apparel

How Do You Handle Custom T-Shirt WooCommerce Store Setup?

You install Cmsmart Custom Apparel Store with Store Setup v2, then use this first hour to brand it, configure one product’s Cmsmart Product Designer tab and Printing Options, connect payments and shipping, and place a test order before you go live.

Install first. Store Setup v2 downloads an installer file or the theme files for you, with your licence key and sample data already attached. That part has its own guide: Install a Cmsmart store: WordPress, the parent theme and the child theme. Come back here once the store is live on your domain.

Video thumbnail for downloading and kickstarting Cmsmart Product Designer
Video: How to download Cmsmart Product Designer and kickstart your ecommerce store (Cmsmart on YouTube).

With the store installed, here is the first hour:

  1. Brand the header and footer. In Appearance › Editor, edit the Header and Footer template parts: swap the Site Logo block, set your colours, and update the menu. Deeper options — fonts, patterns, extra blocks — are covered in Customise a Cmsmart store: recommended plugins and the site editor.
  2. Check the pages and menus Store Setup imported. Pages › All Pages lists what came with the demo — Home, Shop, Cart, Checkout, My account and more — so confirm your menu points at the ones you plan to keep.
  3. Open one product and review its Cmsmart Product Designer tab. The “Setting Cmsmart” box lists the design areas (Front, Back, Left sleeve, Right sleeve), the Upload Design switch, and the editor layout (Modern is recommended).
  4. Review that product’s Printing Options. The “NBD options” box’s Edit option screen sets the print method, print locations and quantity-based pricing. Use the demo product as your template.
  5. Decide design-online vs. upload-your-file per product. Enable Upload Design where buyers already have print-ready artwork, and leave it off for products built only in the online designer.
  6. Connect payments. WooCommerce › Settings › Payments lists Woo Payments, PayPal Payments and offline methods for testing — install and configure at least one before you take a real order.
  7. Set your shipping zones. WooCommerce › Settings › Shipping ships with a United States zone and a Rest of the world zone with no methods yet; add zones and rates for where you ship.
  8. Set your store address and currency. WooCommerce › Settings › General carries the address used for tax and shipping rates, plus selling locations — replace the placeholder with your own.
Custom t-shirt WooCommerce store setup: WordPress site editor open on the Header template part, with the Site Logo and Main menu blocks
The Header template part in the site editor: the Site Logo and Main menu blocks are where your branding replaces the sample.
WordPress Pages list showing 27 pages imported by Store Setup, including Home, Cart, Checkout and My account
Pages › All Pages after Store Setup: the storefront pages are already created and published.
Product page for the Unisex Short Sleeve Tee with size, colour and print method options above the price
The buyer side of the same product: size, colour and print method sit above the price before the buyer ever opens the designer.
WooCommerce Settings Payments tab listing Woo Payments, PayPal Payments and Take offline payments
WooCommerce › Settings › Payments: install at least one of these before you accept a real order.
WooCommerce General settings showing the store address fields and selling and shipping location options
WooCommerce › Settings › General: the store address drives your tax and shipping rates, so update it before you go live.

Once payments and shipping are connected, run through a test order before you tell anyone the store is open:

  1. Add a demo (or your own) product to the cart and check that the size, colour, print method and artwork choice you picked all show on the cart line.
  2. Proceed to checkout and confirm the price, shipping method and total match what you expect.
  3. Complete the order with an offline or sandbox payment method, then check it appears in WooCommerce › Orders with the design and options attached.
  4. Confirm the order confirmation email reaches you and reads the way you want a customer to see it.
WooCommerce cart line item listing size, colour, print method, print location, neck label and delivery choices
A test order’s cart line: every printing-option choice the buyer made travels with the product into the order.

Go-live checklist

  • Branding (logo, colours, header, footer) replaced on every template part you use.
  • At least one of your own products published with its Cmsmart Product Designer tab and Printing Options reviewed.
  • Payments and shipping zones connected and tested with a real order.
  • Store address, currency and selling locations set to your own business.
  • Sample catalogue products you are not keeping removed or unpublished, per Cmsmart › Store Setup.

What Store-Specific Tips Help an Apparel Shop?

Cmsmart Custom Apparel Store ships with a Team & Event Wear category and copy built for bulk orders, so apparel shops can lean on that instead of writing bulk-order messaging from scratch.

  • The home hero already promotes bulk orders at 12+ pieces with names, numbers and a proof before printing — set a matching quantity-pricing break in Printing Options.
  • Keep the sample catalogue’s categories (T-Shirts, Hoodies, Women’s Tees, Team & Event Wear, Caps & Bags) as you swap in your own garments; it already matches how apparel buyers shop.
  • Keep the demo’s garment-zone design-area names (Front, Back, Left sleeve, Right sleeve) so buyers and production read an order the same way.

What Custom Development Can Cmsmart Add for Your Print Shop?

Beyond the store Cmsmart ships today, Cmsmart builds the apparel-specific workflows a growing print shop asks for next, from gang-sheet production to fulfilment integrations, as custom development on top of the same store.

These are not in the store out of the box; they are examples of what Cmsmart builds for print shops that outgrow the standard setup:

  • DTF gang-sheet builder. A layout tool that packs multiple customer designs onto one print sheet, for shops running direct-to-film transfers.
  • Fulfilment integrations. Connecting the store to a production partner such as Printful or Printify, or to your own MIS, so orders route to production without re-keying.
  • Company and team ordering portals. Approval flows and saved team rosters for school, club and corporate buyers who reorder every season.
  • ERP and inventory sync. Keeping stock, sizes and colours in step between the store and a warehouse or production system.

Cmsmart delivers custom work through discovery, solution design, build sprints, QA and launch, then support — see real builds at Cmsmart ecommerce projects.

Get a quote for your apparel store

Why Work with Cmsmart for Your Custom Apparel Store?

Cmsmart has built ecommerce and web-to-print stores since 2012 as a Netbase JSC division, with the Cmsmart Product Designer and Cmsmart Stores line running on thousands of live sites today.

Cmsmart counts 6,300+ client projects and 1,800+ live stores since 2012, across 80+ countries, with a 4.2-star Trustpilot rating from 404 reviews (Trustpilot). Try the live demo of this store before you install anything, see its product page, and read more setup guides in the Cmsmart Product Designer user guides.

If your print shop needs more than the store ships with, Cmsmart’s store-setup team can do the first hour for you: see Cmsmart store preset installation and demo import, or plan my apparel store with Cmsmart.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can I use my own products instead of the sample catalogue?

Yes. The 22 sample products exist so the store is sellable from minute one; replace them with your own garments at your pace, using a demo product’s Cmsmart Product Designer tab and Printing Options as your template.

Which Cmsmart plan activates the Custom Apparel Store?

Every Cmsmart store is a free download that you activate on your domain with a Cmsmart Fullstore plan, which also covers updates and ticket support. See current plans on the pricing page.

Can I change the colours and logo without touching code?

Yes. The header, footer and home page are WordPress site-editor template parts, so you replace the logo, set colours and edit the layout from Appearance › Editor, with no theme files to touch.

Do buyers have to design online, or can they upload their own artwork?

Either, per product. The Cmsmart Product Designer tab has an Upload Design switch next to online design, so you choose whether a buyer designs on the garment, uploads print-ready artwork, or both.

How do quantity prices for team and event orders work?

Quantity-based pricing is a Printing Options setting on the product, next to print method and print locations. The sample Team & Event Wear category and its “from 12 pieces” messaging show the pattern; set your own break point and prices there.

What happens to the sample catalogue when I go live?

Nothing removes it automatically. Keep the categories if they suit your range, but unpublish or delete the demo products you are not selling as part of your go-live checklist.