Made to order

For pieces you make after the order arrives. Strata shows them as made to order rather than sold out, with your real lead time on the card and a timeline on the product page.

How the theme knows

A variant is made to order when it is out of stock and “Continue selling when out of stock” is on for it, in the admin. That is the whole rule — nothing to tag, nothing to fill in:

In the admin	The theme says
In stock	Ready to ship
Out of stock, continue selling on	Made to order
Out of stock, continue selling off	Sold out
Inventory not tracked	Whatever you chose in the settings (Ready to ship by default)

The same rule drives the badge on product cards and the block on the product page, from one place in the theme, so a card and a product page can never tell a customer two different things.

You can also force it per product with a metafield — see Per product below.

The badge on product cards

Theme settings → Product cards → Badges

Setting	Notes
Show made to order badge	For products that are out of stock with “Continue selling when out of stock” on — the ones you make per order.
Products without inventory tracking	Ready to ship or Made to order. This is the only place the question is asked: the badge on the card and the Production status block on the product page both read it, so they cannot disagree.
Production time	A range like 3-5 or a single number, in days. Leave empty for a badge without a time.
Production time metafield	Product metafield (namespace.key) with that product’s own production time. It replaces the time above wherever it is filled in. Default custom.made_days.
Forced status metafield	Product metafield holding made or ready to decide it per product, whatever the stock says. Default custom.production_status.

The badge reads “Made to order · 3–5 days” with a time, or just “Made to order” without one.

The Production status block on the product page

Add block → Production status (one per page). It shows the status of the selected variant, the lead time, the estimated delivery dates and the timeline.

Ready to ship

Setting	Notes
Label	Default “In stock, ready to ship”.
Ships in at least (business days) / Ships in at most (business days)	Default 1 and 2.
Low stock below	Shows “Only 2 left” at or below this many. 0 = off. Real inventory only.

Made to order

Setting	Notes
Label	Default “Made to order”.
Ships in at least (business days) / Ships in at most (business days)	Default 3 and 5.

Per product

Connect these three to product metafields with the dynamic source icon, and a product can override the settings above. Products without a value use the settings.

Setting	Notes
Force status	made = made to order, ready = ready to ship. Overrides the stock-based status while the variant is available.
Ready to ship: ships in (business days)	A range like 1-2 or a single number. Replaces the numbers above.
Made to order: ships in (business days)	A range like 3-5 or a single number.

The recommended metafields are custom.production_status, custom.ready_days and custom.made_days — the same keys the badge settings default to, so the card and the page agree without you naming anything twice. See Metafields.

Delivery estimate

Setting	Notes
Show estimated delivery dates
Shipping takes at least (business days) / Shipping takes at most (business days)	Default 1 and 3. Your carrier’s transit time, added on top of production.

Timeline

Order → production → delivery, with the dates worked out from the business days above.

Setting	Notes
Show the timeline
First step	Default “Ordered”. Dated today.
Second step	Default “Made and shipped”. Dated by the production time of the chosen variant.
Third step	Default “Delivered”. Production plus shipping time. Hidden while estimated delivery dates are off.

The dates are worked out in the browser, from business days, which means a page served from a cache never shows yesterday’s date. No step is ever marked as reached, and there is no countdown: it is an estimate of something that has not happened yet, and the Theme Store does not allow false urgency. If you want to track the parcel, that is Shopify’s shipping notifications, not the product page.

Setting your lead times honestly

• Count business days, as the labels say. The dates skip weekends.
• Give a range you hit nine times out of ten, not your best case. The range is a promise; the review that follows a missed one is permanent.
• If one product is slower than the rest, fill in custom.made_days on it rather than raising the global time for the whole catalogue.

Troubleshooting

Nothing says “made to order”. The variant is in stock, or “Continue selling when out of stock” is off. Check it on the variant, not the product.

The badge shows no time. Production time is empty and the product has no custom.made_days.

The card says one thing and the page another. They cannot: both read the same stock rules and the same Products without inventory tracking setting. If they still differ, one of them is showing a per-product override (custom.production_status) that the other cannot see — check that metafield on the product.

Pre-orders and editions

Two more states share the same rule, so a card and the product page can never disagree:

• Pre-order — give the product a release date (a Date metafield, custom.release_date by default; the key is set in Theme settings → Production → Release date metafield). While that day is ahead, an available product is sold as a pre-order: the card badge reads “Pre-order · ships 12 Dec”, the Production status block shows its Pre-order label with the same day, the cart line says when it ships, and the timeline counts from that day rather than from today. On the release day the stock takes over again, by itself. Force status also accepts preorder for a pre-order without a date.
• Editions — custom.edition_size (how many exist) and, optionally, custom.edition_number (this piece’s number) give “Edition of 12”, “3 of 12” or, for a size of 1, “One of a kind” — as a badge on cards (Show edition badge) and as a line in the Production status block (Show the edition).