Notes on craft, clients, and building software for the people who make things by hand.
Two things shipped this summer that belong together. Every client portal now carries a moodboard the client curates themselves — photographs, links and colours, shared live with the studio. And Vidual is now first-class for studios whose commissions end in a scheme rather than an object: fees and day rates instead of a parts list, for interior designers, architects and creative consultants.
Read moreMost handmade prices are arrived at by feel, then defended after the fact. Materials, labour, overhead and margin — with a calculator that turns your year into a shop rate, and a worked example that shows what pricing by feel really pays.
Read moreCOGS = opening inventory + purchases − closing inventory. What each term actually means in a workshop, the direct-versus-overhead test that trips most makers up, and a calculator to run your own numbers both ways.
Read moreWe make one of these, so this isn’t a ranked list. It’s the checklist we use ourselves when we look at other software: eight things a tool has to do before it deserves to sit between you and your clients, how the answer changes between three builds and thirty, and how to run the test in a fortnight rather than a year.
Read moreMost “best PM tools” lists are written for teams that ship code or move deals through a pipeline. If you make things to order — a steel frame, a hand-set ring, a bespoke suit — those lists measure the wrong things. A builder’s guide to boards, calendars and work-order systems, how to trial one against your own Monday morning, and where a purpose-built maker’s studio fits.
Read moreThree things shipped this season, and one thread through them. A voice that becomes text — transcribed on a server we own, in Amsterdam, never leaving the EU. The Docket, for the work that never reaches a client. And a calm view of who’s carrying what. Built, not borrowed.
Read moreA bespoke watch commission runs for years — a design conversation spread across fittings and emails, payments spread across tax years, provenance that has to outlive everyone involved. The software on offer is repair-shop tooling or factory ERP. What the practice actually needs is smaller, and shaped differently.
Read moreA commissioned instrument carries its build number for life, is made of tonewood that can sell out while a deposit stalls, and belongs to a customer who wants to watch it take shape. None of that is a repair ticket, and repair-shop software treats it as one. On running the lutherie business around the bench.
Read moreCAD has the geometry covered. The rest of the business — deposits, the BOM, supplier orders across eight portals, client updates, books that need to know it all happened — still runs on email and a spreadsheet. On what purpose-built software does with that side of framebuilding.
Read moreAdd a part to a worksheet. See it’s short. Click through to Concierge — the order is already grouped under the supplier, ready to send. And before you send it, three more parts you didn’t know you’d need yet. The most useful three clicks in Vidual, in their proper order.
Read moreEight suppliers, eight portals, eight SKU systems, eight different ways of being ordered from — a morning a week, gone. Concierge gathers every shortfall across every project and prepares each supplier’s order — without ever sending an email on your behalf.
Read moreVidual can do a lot. But the difference between a tool you visit and a studio you live in comes down to a few small things you can set up in under a minute. Push notifications, passkeys, your custom domain — and why we pre-fill what we already know.
Read moreEvery maker has thoughts that aren’t messages yet — a fleeting idea about a build, a mental bookmark for later, something to check before the next fitting. Most project tools have nowhere for them. Vidual does.
Read moreA kingfisher glides above the surface, patient and wide-eyed, until something moves — then it dives. That’s how you should be running your workshop when you’ve got fifty builds on the go. How Vidual’s Activity page keeps high-volume makers in control.
Read moreThe parts that make up a bespoke commission are scattered across supplier emails, courier apps, and your memory. Vidual ties every component to the project that needs it — and tells you the moment it arrives.
Read moreMost makers treat invoicing as a separate job — something to catch up on at the end of the week, usually in a different app. Vidual now connects to QuickBooks and Xero so the work order you already built becomes the invoice in your accounts package. One flow, no re-typing.
Read moreWhat gantt charts are actually for, where they become overhead for a small workshop, and what a self-updating alternative looks like — every commission on its completion date, your to-dos alongside, in the calendar you already check twenty times a day.
Read more"Demand planning" sounds like something for factories with conveyor belts. But if you've ever run out of a part mid-build, stalled a project waiting for a payment, or ordered too late because you didn't see the next three builds coming — you've been doing it in your head. Vidual just makes it visible.
Read moreMakers rarely go looking for project management software. They go looking for a way out of email. That distinction matters — because it changes what the solution needs to look like.
Read moreA bespoke commission is a relationship, not a transaction. The way your client experiences the build — the updates, the photos, the feeling of being looked after — is as much a part of your product as the finished piece. Here's how Vidual makes that experience effortless for both sides.
Read moreThe Bill of Materials, studio calendar, and payment requests weren't designed as three separate features. They're three sides of the same question every maker asks every day: what does this build need, when does it need it, and is it paid for?
Read moreVidual started with a conversation in a frame builder's workshop. The builds were immaculate — the admin was chaos. This is the story of what we're building, who it's for, and why we're writing about it as we go.
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