Characters & Character Sets

Overview

Characters and Character Sets are the building blocks of Custom Font typographies. Each represents a personalisation unit — either a single letter or a pre-made text block — with its own image and SKU linked to your ecommerce platform.

Characters

A Character is a single letter, number, or symbol that customers can use when personalising a product.

What Makes Up a Character

Field	Description
Character	The letter, number, or symbol (single character, max 1)
SKU	The product code in your ecommerce platform — must match an active product in your synced catalogue
Image	A visual representation of the character (stored as JPEG)

Adding Characters

1. Navigate to Typography and select a Custom Font typography
2. Go to the Characters tab
3. Click Add Characters
4. For each character, provide:
   • The character (single letter/symbol)
   • Select the SKU from the dropdown (pulled from your synced product catalogue)
   • Upload an image of the character

You can add multiple characters at once — each row in the form represents one character.

SKU Linking

Each character's SKU must correspond to an active external product in your synced catalogue. This ensures:

• Inventory is tracked per character
• Orders include the correct product codes
• Pricing flows through to your ecommerce platform

Editing Characters

Select existing characters and update their details (character value, SKU, or image). Changes are applied in bulk — you can update multiple characters in a single save.

Deleting Characters

• Single delete — Remove an individual character
• Mass delete — Select multiple characters and delete them at once

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Character Sets

A Character Set is a pre-made text block — a name, word, phrase, or any multi-character string offered as a single selectable option. Instead of typing individual characters, the customer picks a ready-made option.

What Makes Up a Character Set

Field	Description
Character Set	The text string (e.g., "EMMA", "LOVE", "Happy Birthday")
SKU	The product code in your ecommerce platform — must match an active product in your synced catalogue
Image	A visual representation of the character set (stored as JPEG)
Back Order First	Whether this character set can be back-ordered when out of stock
Fallback to Characters	If enabled, falls back to individual characters when this set is unavailable

Adding Character Sets

1. Navigate to Typography and select a Custom Font typography
2. Go to the Character Sets tab
3. Click Add Character Sets
4. For each set, provide:
   • The text string
   • Select the SKU from the dropdown
   • Upload an image
   • Set Back Order First (yes/no)
   • Set Fallback to Characters (yes/no)

Back Order First

When enabled, this character set can still be selected by customers even when the linked product is out of stock. The order will be placed as a back-order. This is useful for popular names or phrases that you want to keep available.

Fallback to Characters

When enabled, if this character set is unavailable (out of stock and back-ordering is disabled), the system will automatically fall back to rendering the text using individual characters instead. This ensures the customer can still personalise their product, just using the character-by-character approach.

Editing Character Sets

Same as characters — select and update in bulk. You can change the text, SKU, image, back-order setting, and fallback behaviour.

Deleting Character Sets

• Single delete — Remove an individual character set
• Mass delete — Select multiple character sets and delete them at once

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Characters vs Character Sets

	Characters	Character Sets
What it is	Single letter/symbol	Pre-made text block
Customer experience	Types individual letters	Picks from a list
SKU mapping	One SKU per letter	One SKU per text block
Typical use	Free-text engraving	Name personalisation, popular phrases
Image	One image per character	One image per set

Next Steps

• Custom Fonts — Set up pricing rules and font configuration
• Typography Overview — Back to the Typography overview