How EverPlain mixes automatic pins with hand-picked holiday shirts

EverPlain makes personalized apparel for life's special moments: family trips, celebrations, gifts and everyday memories. Every item is made to order and shipped from the shop's production partners. Many designs come on Comfort Colors tees, garment dyed for a soft, vintage look, with the ink printed into the fabric so it won't peel the way vinyl can.

The catalog follows the calendar. There are German Shepherds in Halloween costumes, a squad of pickles dressed as Santa, a reindeer, a tree, a snowman and an elf, and a fall teacher sweatshirt that reads "Teach them, encourage them, believe in them, watch them grow." There are custom name tees for back to school and beach trips, and a Christmas sweatshirt made from a photo of the buyer's own dog. The shop has close to 400 active listings, more than 350 reviews and a 4.85 star rating.

A shop built around holidays never gets a quiet month. Halloween shirts give way to Thanksgiving, Thanksgiving to Christmas, then Valentine's Day, Easter, graduation, summer trips and back to school. Each season brings new designs, and each design has a short window when people are shopping for it.

Plenty of that planning happens on Pinterest, where people save outfit ideas for a pumpkin patch trip or matching shirts for a family Christmas photo. Pinning by hand means choosing photos and writing a title and description for every pin, for every new listing. And the older designs need pins too, or they drop out of sight once they stop being new. For a shop that adds designs for every holiday, that list never gets shorter.

EverPlain connected its Pinterest account to Alura and turned on both automations. Pin New Listings is a daily job that picks up listings that went live in the past day, so a new design reaches Pinterest without anyone remembering to pin it. When the North Pole Christmas village tee was listed, it went out as a set of pins, each one worded a little differently.

Smart Pins works through the rest of the shop. Once a day it fills the Pin Queue with pins made from active listings, about 10 days ahead, ranked mostly by Etsy listing views. A photo pinned in the last 7 days isn't reused. That keeps older designs, from the floral book lover tee to the cottagecore thrifting shirt, turning up between the new arrivals.

Pin text for both automations is set to Optimized for Pinterest with AI, which writes the title, description and alt text from the listing. Then there's the part EverPlain does itself. In the Create tab, the shop picks out designs for the coming holiday, like a Thanksgiving tee, a fall teacher sweatshirt or the Christmas pickle crew, and adds them to the queue. Pins added this way sit at a higher priority than the automated ones, so they go out first, and some are marked high to put them at the very front. The queue settings decide how many pins go out each day, on which days and in which time slots.

Some of the pins the shop has sent out for fall and Christmas: "Boho Turkey Thanksgiving Shirt with Floral Fall Design." "Cozy Fall Teacher Sweatshirt with Pumpkin Design." "Festive Christmas Pickle Sweatshirt for Holiday Cheer." "Whimsical North Pole Christmas Village Tee in Pink and Red."

Each one says what the shirt is and who it's for in a single phrase. The Etsy title for the pickle sweatshirt is written for Etsy search, with a run of phrases a shopper might type: "Christmas Pickle Sweatshirt, Funny Christmas Sweatshirt, Pickle Lover Sweater, Cute Christmas Crewneck, Holiday Sweatshirt, Christmas Gift." The pin keeps the idea and drops the list, which suits a board of holiday outfit ideas.

Every pin links back to its listing, so someone who saves the pickle sweatshirt to a Christmas board is one tap away from ordering it.

Work a season ahead. Get holiday designs listed while people are still planning, not in the week they need the shirt.

And don't let a big catalog go quiet. The newest design will always get your attention, but last year's favorites still have buyers who haven't found them yet. Let automation keep the whole catalog moving, then pick a few designs for each holiday and give those a push yourself. You know which new design you're proudest of.