65 Years of Permit Printing and One Automation That Changed Everything.
Rydin came to DesignNBuy to take custom tag ordering online. What got built went further – automating the template system, the sequence numbering, and the print-ready file output their team had been managing by hand.
65+ Years of Expertise
Now on one platform
Decades of product knowledge and print complexity, fully automated in a single system
1 Template
Infinite variants
One product setup now generates any colour or design combination. No more building each variant from scratch
Sequence Numbers
Now fully automated
What was tracked and assigned by hand is now generated, sequenced, and applied in a single step
Print-Ready Files
Zero manual adjustment
Every file that leaves the system is already compatible with Rydin's production machines. No prep, no fixes
Rydin Automated the Most Manual Part of Permit Printing. Here Is How.
The Hidden Complexity Inside a Simple Tag
A parking permit looks like one of the simplest print products in the world.
It is a tag. It has a number on it. It might have a colour, a logo, a date range. Organisations order them in bulk, hang them from rear-view mirrors, and replace them each season. For anyone outside the print industry, it barely registers as a product.
But for the manufacturer producing it, a parking permit is one of the most operationally demanding items in the catalogue.
Every permit number must be unique and sequentially accurate. A university ordering 5,000 spring permits cannot receive a batch where numbers repeat or skip. A hospital issuing daily passes cannot afford a file that needs manual correction before it goes to press.
Add to that the variation problem. Rydin serves organisations across universities, hospitals, municipalities, and property management – many of whom want the same core tag in different colours and designs. Under a traditional setup, each variant is a separate product built from scratch, with its own files and its own configuration. Multiply that across a full catalogue and you have not a product but a production system, one that had been running entirely on manual labour for sixty-five years.
That is what Rydin brought to DesignNBuy. Not just a request to go online, but a production problem that had been absorbing time, headcount, and risk for over six decades.
How the Project Came Together
Bringing Custom Tag Design Online
The initial brief was to give Rydin’s customers the ability to design and order custom tags online, without going back and forth with a sales team.
DesignNBuy implemented DesignO into Rydin’s ordering environment. Customers could now select a tag type, configure their design, preview it, and place an order in a single flow. No email chains, no attached files, no manual quoting for standard jobs. This alone was a meaningful shift. But once DesignNBuy looked closely at Rydin’s production workflow, it became clear the bigger problem was on the production side, and it had three distinct layers.
The Template Problem
Rydin’s catalogue includes many products that are essentially the same tag in different colours or design variants. Under the previous setup, each variant existed as a separate product with its own configuration and files. If a product came in eight colours, that was eight setups. If the design changed, that was eight updates.
DesignNBuy built a custom template system that eliminated this. A single product now carries all its colour and design variants within one configuration. Rydin creates the template once and manages variants from that single source. Adding a new colour takes minutes, not hours. Products now managed through the template system:
Hang Tags
Parking permits with sequential numbering, available across multiple colour and design variants from a single template
Parking Decals
Windshield permits and adhesive stickers, each with their own print spec, managed without separate product setups
Access & Specialty Tags
Student pickup tags, event passes, and credentials, each configured from the same template architecture
Automating the Numbers
The sequence number requirement separates permit printing from most other print categories. A standard job is about reproducing a design accurately. A permit job is about producing a set of unique, sequential identifiers that are tracked, audited, and used for access control.
Rydin had been handling this through a manual process. DesignNBuy built a custom sequence number tool directly into the production workflow. Bulk numbering is now generated automatically, applied to the correct fields, and ready for print with no manual intervention. The risk of sequencing errors dropped to zero.
Print-Ready at the Point of Order
Rydin’s production machines require files that meet specific technical specifications before they can run. Previously, files often needed manual adjustment before they were usable. Someone had to check, correct, and prepare each file before it could move to production.
DesignNBuy configured DesignO to output files that are production-compatible from the moment an order is placed. The file that comes out of the system is the file that goes to the machine. No preparation step, no correction round, no manual quality check required for a standard job.
A System, Not Just a Tool
The template system, sequence numbering, and print-ready file generation are not three separate features. They are three components of a single automated system: a customer designs and orders a custom permit online, and the resulting file arrives in production correctly numbered, correctly configured, and ready to run.
What began as a brief to add an online design tool became the entire operational backbone of Rydin’s tag and permit production.
The Manual Work Hidden Inside Every Custom Tag Order
Variant configurations, sequential numbering, machine-ready files. These are not edge cases in permit printing. They are the core of the job. The question is whether they are being handled by your system, or by your team.
Your catalogue variants are multiplying
Every time a product gets a new colour or design, that should not mean a new setup from scratch. Template-based configuration means you build once and manage all variants from a single source. Adding a colour, updating a design, scaling the catalogue — none of it requires starting over.
Your numbers have to be right every single time
Permit numbers are tracked, audited, and tied to access control systems. One sequence error is not a cosmetic issue. It is an operational failure. Automated numbering removes the manual step and removes the risk from the one part of the job that can least afford it.
Your files should not need a person between the order and the machine
Every file that requires manual preparation before production is a delay that compounds across every order. When DesignO is configured to your machine specifications, the file that comes out of the system is the file that runs. No prep, no correction, no waiting.
If You Run a Specialist Print Operation, This Overhead Is Familiar.
The complexity lives in production, not in the design
Online ordering is the visible transformation. What actually changes a print operation is what happens after the order: file preparation, numbering, variant management. These are where time disappears and errors cost money. Building the right system means solving for production first, not as an afterthought.
One template multiplies across your entire catalogue
The template system does not just save time on one product. It changes how the whole catalogue scales. Every new variant, every season update, every colour addition becomes a matter of minutes rather than a fresh build from scratch. The efficiency compounds every time the catalogue grows.
Variable data has to be designed in, not added later
Sequence numbering cannot be bolted onto a standard web-to-print setup. It has to be built into the production workflow from the start, with the specific rules and requirements of the business understood before a single line is written. Retrofitting it is far harder than building it right the first time.
A long-term partner, not a project handoff
The Rydin implementation required deep understanding of their machines, their file specifications, and their production requirements. That kind of fit is not achieved in a single delivery. It is built over time, through a working relationship where each new requirement is understood in context of everything that came before.
Building a design tool that offers our customers the ability to create complex permitting solutions while providing us print-ready output that matches our production needs was not an easy task. Working with everyone at DesignNBuy from the start of the project and continuing to improve functionality, has been a pleasure. Your responsiveness, ability to develop features and bring the needs of the site to life, and your ability to figure out how to execute on the aspects we need that make the site work for our unique customers — everyone on the Rydin web team very much appreciates you.
Chuck Kohut
Marketing Director| Rydin
Frequently Asked Questions
BigCommerce’s architecture imposed limits that made it impossible to build the level of product configuration and design integration Ribbons Galore required. Quantity-based pricing structures, complex product option sets, and the custom design studio all needed a platform flexible enough to support deep customisation at the infrastructure level. Magento provided that flexibility. The migration was a prerequisite for everything that followed.
When a customer orders award ribbons for an event — first place, second place, third place, and so on — each ribbon in the batch needs a different title, but the design and configuration should otherwise be consistent. The Award Title feature allows customers to specify individual award titles per variation within a single order flow, positioned at the top or bottom of the design, without rebuilding the configuration from scratch for each one. It eliminates one of the most manual and error-prone parts of the old ordering process.
Customers can save a design in progress to their account and return to it at any point. They can also generate a shareable URL that allows others to view and review the design — useful for B2B customers who need internal sign-off before placing a large order. Once approved, the saved design can be brought straight into the order flow without any rework.
Every completed design exits the system as a file that meets Ribbons Galore’s production specifications: 300 DPI resolution, black and white format where required, with a transparent background. Automated job sheets accompany custom product orders and picklists accompany stock items. The file that arrives in production is the file that runs — no manual preparation, no format conversion, no quality check required for a standard order.
The principles behind the Ribbons Galore implementation — complex variant configuration, design preview, multi-variant ordering in a single session, and production-ready output — apply to any product category where customers need to specify more than a standard checkout allows. Promotional products, award merchandise, personalised event items, and any category with high configuration complexity are natural fits for the same approach.
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