From order to garment
How Exora.ink moves a job through every stage — from intake all the way to a finished garment. Two formats: a polished infographic for the bird's-eye view, and a detailed flowchart with every system and decision point.
Stage by stage
Each stage in plain English, with the systems and tools that drive it.
01
Intake
Orders come in two ways. Website orders flow from exora.ink via the WooCommerce REST API into the Orders Dashboard. Manual orders (phone, email, walk-in, invoiced clients) go into the Custom Orders Dashboard with auto-generated C-NNNN numbers and full CRUD. Both share the same status vocabulary so operators have one mental model.
02
Design Prep
Either start from customer-supplied art (uploaded directly) or generate from scratch in the Image Studio with Gemini Nano Banana. The Image Studio has two tiers: Preview ($0.04, 1K) for iterating on prompt and composition, and Production ($0.24, 4K) for the locked version. A magenta #FF00FF chroma-key background is enforced by every prompt — no transparent-PNG halos.
03
Key Out Magenta
Server-side sharp pipeline walks every pixel and converts anything within tolerance of #FF00FF to fully transparent. Tight tolerance (24/255) prevents eating into hot-pink elements. Output is a real transparent PNG — no anti-aliased fringe to print as a white halo on dark garments.
04
QC + Halo Inspection
Every result runs through 7 automated checks: pixel dimensions, effective DPI at the selected print size, metadata DPI (cosmetic), transparency, RGB color mode, edge bleed, file size. If effective DPI is below 300 at the chosen print size, the Real-ESRGAN upscale button appears. The operator must tick a HALO INSPECTION REQUIRED checkbox before download/ship to confirm there's no edge fringe that'll print as a white halo.
05
Handoff
Two ship paths. Local download for one-off jobs. Send to Hot Folder uploads the print-ready PNG to a configured Dropbox folder (/Apps/Exora-RIP/hot) where the RIP machine watches for new files. Dropbox auth uses a long-lived OAuth refresh token so the connection survives indefinitely.
06
RIP, Print, Press
RIP software color-manages and nests for material efficiency. The Mimaki TxF300-75 prints onto 30" × 325ft DTF film — 36% more printable area per linear foot than competing 22" transfer houses. White ink underbase + adhesive powder cure. Hotronix Dual Air Fusion presses at 300°F for 12s with firm pressure. Final visual inspection, then ship or pickup.
Pricing tiers (Press Service)
Print-and-Press service is anchored to the screen-print market rate, with the discount scaling by color count. The customer always saves vs. screen print; we capture more of the color-count value gap as our revenue at higher color counts.
TIER A · PREMIUM
5–32%
below screen print
Complex art · premium garments · precision placements
TIER B · COMPETITIVE
10–48%
below screen print
Default for most jobs · balanced savings/margin
TIER C · VOLUME
15–58%
below screen print
Win competitive bids · high-volume · price-sensitive