Off the shelf

In finance or commerce, off the shelf refers to products that have already been designed and made, compared to "made to measure," (or "one-off," "custom-built," "custom made,", "bespoke", etc.), which refer to products that are made to a special order.
Off-the-shelf products are generally cheaper and more quickly available than those made to measure.
The term comes originally from clothing manufacture; items are either mass produced or made especially for a particular customer (i.e. made to measure that customer's exact size, not an approximation to it). Equivalent terms are ready-to-wear, off the rack, and prêt-à-porter (French: ready to wear).
In the computing industry, off-the-shelf software is that available on demand as a stock item, i.e. not specially designed or custom-made. That which is made for a specific customer is generally called bespoke software.

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