Industry Starting Points¶

Choose the industry that most closely matches how your business buys, makes, tracks, and sells physical goods. Loupe Factory uses that choice to preload starter product types, inventory states, material categories, production stages, sizes, shapes, and team roles.

These starting points save setup time without locking you into a fixed process. Review the closest match, then adapt the defaults to your products and workflow.

Compare the Starting Points¶

Open the closest match to review its catalogs and workflow before selecting it in Organization Settings.

What Your Selection Preloads¶

flowchart LR
    I{"Choose an industry"} --> P["Product types, sizes & shapes"]
    I --> V["Inventory types & materials"]
    I --> W["Production stages & teams"]
    I --> A["Default item attribute keys"]
    I --> K["Cost component types"]
    I --> B["Price basis & weight unit"]
    P --> C["Review and customize"]
    V --> C
    W --> C
    A --> C
    K --> C
    B --> C

Your industry selection gives the team a useful first vocabulary. Admins can tailor these defaults in the relevant settings pages. Available actions vary by catalog.

Costing follows the same choice. Your industry decides which cost component types you can pick when building up an item's cost, so a jewelry item is costed by metal and stones while a lighting item is costed by crystal, wiring, and plating. It also sets the starting price basis and default weight unit: gemstones start priced per carat, every other industry per piece.

Your selection also decides the default item attributes on every inventory item, so a gemstone item starts with a Certificate No row and an auto parts item starts with OEM Part No and Vehicle Make. Each industry page below lists its own defaults.

Warning

Changing Industry later reloads industry-based defaults for products, inventory, materials, sizes, shapes, departments, designations, production stages, and shipping carriers. Size groups, size options, and shapes are recreated; custom entries in other catalogs may be removed or deactivated. Review these settings before you save, then verify them again afterward. Item attributes are the exception: items keep the attributes they already carry and pick up the new industry's keys the next time someone saves them.

Where to Customize the Starting Point¶

Use Product Settings for product types, default weight units, size groups, and shapes.
Use Inventory Settings for inventory types and stock-control defaults.
Use Production Settings for stages, order, department assignments, and workflow policies.
Use Organization Settings for industry selection, departments, designations, and locations.
Use Orders Settings for shipping carriers and order defaults.

Next Steps¶

Select the closest match in Organization Settings.
Review the related product, inventory, production, team, and order defaults.
Continue with Definitions so every team in your business works from the same terminology.