How GE Designs Turns Manufacturing Delays into Growth Opportunities

About GE Designs‍

GE Designs, a family-owned quilting company founded in the early 2000s, now has 18 employees and its HQ in Minnesota. It started much smaller, with founder Gudrun traveling across the US and Canada, selling quilting books and patterns directly to small shops.

As a quilter herself, Gudrun invented the Stripology Ruler, a tool that helps quilters cut fabric with precision. It became a turning point for the brand: they've since sold 35,000+ rulers, and the momentum led them to expand into combos and kits built around it.

The brand moved onto Shopify in 2017, but it was COVID that changed everything. As quilters stayed home, GE Designs started live shows, tutorials, and even organizing trips for building their quilting community.

The Challenge

Fabric takes up to six months to arrive from manufacturers. To avoid buying more stock than they can sell, GE Designs takes preorders first, then places their order with the manufacturer. This is how they sell their yearly Christmas Advent box. It's also how they handle their books, they count orders first, then print.

Here are the challenges faced by GE Designs:

• Most of their customers are between 60 and 70 years old and prefer a simple checkout experience with minimal text. If the process feels too long or complicated, they are more likely to abandon their purchase.
• GE Designs initially managed preorders manually. They later tried three different apps, but none provided the inventory control and full set of features they needed.
• Their wool pressing mat frequently went out of stock due to supply issues, resulting in missed sales and making it difficult to manage customer demand.

The Solution

GE Designs' E-commerce Manager, Andy Caplan, was looking for a reliable app with strong customer service and dev support to ensure everything works as expected. That's when they found Dibs.

Once live, Dibs solved their real pain points by offering:

• Seamless, customer-forward checkout that matters enormously to a base of older, repeat shoppers who need the experience to feel simple, familiar, and trustworthy every single time.
• On-hold fulfillment gave the team a level of inventory control they'd never had with any previous app. 
• Backorders, GE Designs faced ongoing supply issues with its wool pressing mat. They used the backorder feature to keep the product available for purchase instead of showing “Sold out”.

I rely on a very seamless checkout and order experience for them to come back. If there’s any friction, they just move. That’s why I love Dibs and apps that are able to just work and give us features that are very customer-forward so it’s not confusing for customers.

Atli Einarsson

Chief Operating Officer and co-owner

Results

Andy said that our apps make his life easier, and we’re happy to have contributed to such a positive merchant experience.

Doing Similar Business?

If your store also deals with long manufacturing timelines or limited inventory, GE Designs’ approach offers a practical example of what you can do. Use preorders to forecast demand, and backorders to keep selling. Explore how Dibs can fit into your store’s workflow.