The frame above is a working team store platform with three portals — the storefront a parent orders from on their phone, the club board where a booster treasurer watches the fundraising add up, and the operator console running every club’s store at once. Switch roles in the demo and you’re watching one order from all three sides.
A team store is a window, not a shop
This is the thing most people get wrong about team apparel. A team store isn’t an online shop that sits open all year — it opens, families order for two or three weeks, it closes, and then everything is produced in a single run. That batch is the entire reason a fleece deck parka costs a hundred dollars instead of a hundred and eighty, and it’s why "can I still order one?" the week after has an awkward answer.
So the window is the spine of the whole system. The storefront counts down to it. The club board pushes toward it. The operator schedules production off the back of it. Every screen in the demo knows how many days are left, because in this business that number determines what everyone should be doing today.
The storefront: order once, correctly
Parents get a store in their club’s colours with the deadline stated plainly and the delivery date next to it, because the only question they actually have is when their kid gets the hoodie. Personalisation pulls the name and number straight from the team roster rather than a free-text box — which is how you avoid heat-pressing a misspelled surname onto the most expensive item in the store.
The fundraising is visible rather than hidden. Every item carries a fixed amount that goes to the club, the cart shows exactly what that adds up to, and the store shows how close the club is to its goal. Families give more readily when they can see the number move.
- Countdown to the order deadline on every screen
- Roster-driven names and numbers — no typos to chase
- Youth and adult size runs with real sizing guidance
- The club’s fundraising share shown in the cart
- One delivery date, stated up front
The club board: what a booster treasurer actually needs
A volunteer treasurer doesn’t want a merchandise dashboard. They want to know how much has been raised, who hasn’t ordered yet, and when the money lands. So that’s the board: a fundraising total against a goal, a roster showing exactly which families are missing, one-tap reminders, and a single payout date after delivery.
It also surfaces the one decision that catches clubs out. Screen printing charges setup per design, so a design sitting one unit under the minimum costs the same to run as a full one. The board separates "this is one short — send the reminder" from "this will never get there, decide whether to surcharge or pull it," because those are two completely different actions and lumping them together as a warning helps nobody.
- Fundraising raised against goal, live
- Roster view of who hasn’t ordered, with reminders
- Print minimums split into fixable and unfixable
- What’s selling, by size, before production
- One payout, a few days after delivery
The operator: two margins on every line
Anyone running stores for multiple clubs has a reporting problem that generic e-commerce doesn’t solve: every order has two beneficiaries. The club has a fundraising margin it needs to see and report at a booster meeting. The operator has blanks, decoration, and its own margin, and has no business showing the club a cost sheet.
So the platform keeps a dual P&L off the same orders. The club board shows the club’s slice and nothing else. The operator console shows the full breakdown — garment cost, decoration cost, the club’s share, and what’s actually left — per product, so you can see which items are worth carrying and which are volume that earns nothing.
- Dual P&L — club share and platform margin from the same orders
- Every store on the platform, at whatever stage its window is in
- Build sheets by size, decoration method and personalisation
- Production batching after each window closes
- Club payouts scheduled against delivery
Why a spreadsheet and a generic store both fail here
Off-the-shelf e-commerce assumes inventory sitting on a shelf and an order that ships tomorrow. A team store has no inventory, produces after the fact, batches by decoration method, personalises from a roster, has print minimums, and owes a share of every sale to a third party. Bolting that onto a generic platform means a pile of manual reconciliation at the end of every window — which is exactly the spreadsheet the club was trying to escape.
Built properly, the window closes and the build sheet already exists: every size, every name, every number, grouped by how it gets decorated, with the club’s payout figure calculated. Nobody re-types anything, because nothing was typed twice.
Sideline is an invented platform and Northgate Aquatics is an invented club — this is a real working build, not a client’s live system. Water polo is the example; the same shape fits any booster club, school team, band, dance studio or youth league that sells apparel to raise money. Open the three portals above and follow one order from a parent’s phone to the club’s payout.