The client day books indicate that Anna did not stock all of the ready-to-wear sold in the shop. Her customers first looked at the model books, then offering ready-mades instead of "robes" and "model sets," before placing their orders. Manufacturers sometimes customized orders, as a small group of surviving Maginnis & Thomas order slips in the Tirocchi Archive reveals. A slip dated January 11, 1926, requests five garments. Two were listed with no changes, but no. 1728d was ordered in black with two specifications: instead of fur trimming elsewhere, exactly the same trim that appeared at the hem was to be used, and a new price was to be quoted for approval before production. The fourth and fifth garments were to be made of fabrics that matched samples sent in with the order.(30) RISD Museum curators found in the shop a fashion illustration meant for clients to use in the selection of garments. A very similar dress, but with a different skirt, was also found, the sort of garment that might have been requested by a client using a skirt from a different model. By contrast, a dress identical to the illustration exists in the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the gift of a Philadelphia woman who must have ordered it locally [figs. 31-33].

When the finished garments arrived, customers could keep or reject them. The client day book for 1924-25 records that Mrs. E. A. Loomis placed an order on October 10, 1924, for a black satin and velvet dress with black fur bands. This was probably Maginnis &Thomas no. 1103B, designed by Premet. The dress was ordered, received by Anna on October 23, and sent to Mrs. Loomis on November 13.(31) In an order of sixteen dresses in April 1925, a black lace evening dress by Lucien Lelong arrived for Mrs. A. T. Wall, who, upon seeing the garment, must not have found it to her liking. Anna eventually sent back this dress and three others.

Returned orders were a serious problem for manufacturers. Almost twenty percent of the garments ordered by Anna were eventually returned. In the spring of 1925, Anna ordered approximately one hundred dresses and returned at least seventeen.(32) Anna was not the only retailer to manage her inventory in this way, causing major losses for the manufacturers. When a garment was sent back, the manufacturers' profits often decreased by fifty percent, because by the time the merchandise was received, it would be too late in the season to sell it to another retailer except at a large discount. The Associated Dress Industries tried valiantly to stop returns, estimated at ten percent of all sales. In 1925, the Association put aside $40,000 of its own funds to hire staff to investigate cancellations and returns. Manufacturers found guilty of sending inferior goods would be expelled from the organization, and retailers abusing the return policy were to be tried in local courts to expose unfair business practices.(33) In a letter to the New York Times, a Kansas City retailer claimed that frequently the garments did not arrive in the correct sizes, could not be sold to the customers who ordered them in the first place, and had to be returned, causing a loss to both the manufacturer and retailer.(34) According to articles published in the New York Times, the most common complaint manufacturers received from retailers was that the garments were not as good as the samples, the fabrics were flawed, the wrong thread was used, or the fabric was sewn on the wrong side.(35)