Built on a counter, not in a boardroom.
Garmenly came out of a multi-site dry cleaning and alterations business in Brisbane. Every workflow in it exists because the alternative was costing a real shop real money on a real Tuesday.
We wrote it because nothing on the market did the second trade properly.
Running dry cleaning and alterations side by side sounds like one business. In software it is treated as one and a half. You will find plenty of capable cleaning systems where alterations is a text field bolted to the end of an order, and a handful of tailoring tools that have no idea what a factory or a garment tag is.
So the counter ends up with a workaround: a paper book for the machinist, a whiteboard for fittings, and a monthly guess at whether the alterations bench is actually making money. Meanwhile the agent down the road is phoning through orders that somebody re-keys by hand.
Garmenly is what got built to stop doing that. It started as an internal system for a group of stores, a factory and an agent network, and it was hardened in the least forgiving environment there is — a live counter on a Saturday morning with a queue at the door.
It is now being made available to other operators, because the problem is not unique to one business and the workarounds are not unique either.
That origin has one consequence worth stating plainly: nothing ships until it has been used in anger. Every module on this site was built to solve a cost or a bottleneck in that business first, ran through peak weeks and Saturday queues, and only then became a product feature. Roadmaps here are written by whichever part of the shop is currently the most annoying.
Alterations was about a third of the margin and none of the reporting. That is the gap the whole product came out of.
It has to work in the business that pays for it.
Garmenly is used every day across multiple stores, a factory and a network of drop-off agents, in a business that runs dry cleaning and alterations side by side. That is not a pilot programme. It is the operator’s own livelihood running on it.
Growth in Google reviews
Automatic review requests at collection.
A day off the counter
Agents lodging their own orders instead of ringing them through.
A month saved on messaging
Direct gateway rates at roughly 10,000 messages a month.
A month of rostering software dropped
Scheduling and timesheets moved in-platform.
These are one operator’s figures, in Australian dollars, measured against the systems that business previously paid for. Average order value and customer return rate also increased after the marketing module went live. We publish them because they are real and because we would want to see them, not as a projection of what your business will do — your trade mix, message volume, agent network and staffing all change the sums.
Four things that shape every decision.
Alterations is a trade, not a note field
Priced operations, bench minutes, fittings and machinist capacity are core data structures in Garmenly. If your second trade is invisible in the reporting, you cannot manage it — and most operators are managing it on instinct because their software gave them no other option.
The person holding the garment should enter the order
Re-keying is where errors, delays and arguments come from. That principle is why agents lodge their own orders, why machinists scan their own work, and why drivers scan the van rather than filling in a sheet.
Track the garment, not the bag
Order-level tracking answers a question nobody asks. Customers ask about a specific jacket. Staff need to find a specific gown. Garment-level barcoding is more work to build and it is the only version that helps at the counter.
Your data is yours, always
Full export at any time, not as a parting gift. Software that holds your customer list hostage is not earning its subscription — it is just charging rent on your own business.
Operators who have outgrown a single till.
Garmenly is a good fit if you recognise most of this list. If you recognise none of it, we will say so on the call rather than sell you something you do not need.
- You run more than one location, or a store plus a factory
- Alterations is a meaningful part of your revenue
- Garments move between sites and things occasionally go missing
- You have drop-off agents, or you have thought about it and stopped because of the admin
- You cannot currently answer "what did alterations make last month" without a spreadsheet
- Your due dates are set by feel rather than by capacity
Where we are heading
Garmenly is live in Australia and being rolled out to operators here and in New Zealand first, with the United Kingdom next and North America after that. That order is deliberate — we would rather support a growing group of customers properly than plant a flag in five markets and answer nobody's emails.
Early customers shape the roadmap
If you come on now you are not customer ten thousand filing a ticket into a queue. You get direct access to the people building it, and the things that annoy you tend to become the next thing that gets fixed.
Support from people who have stood behind the counter.
We know when your day is
Nobody wants a software conversation at 8:30am on a Monday. Onboarding, training and check-ins are scheduled around your trading, not around ours.
Training happens in your shop
With your price list, your garments and your staff. A generic demo environment teaches people how to use a demo environment.
Plain answers in writing
Quotes, terms and timelines set out clearly. If we cannot explain a charge or a limitation in a sentence, it should not be in the contract.
Fair things to ask.
Is Garmenly still used in a real dry cleaning business?
Yes. It runs a live multi-site operation every trading day, which is the main reason the workflows are shaped the way they are. Bugs get found by people who cannot afford to have them.
How big do I need to be?
The Single site tier exists for one good shop, particularly one with a serious alterations bench. Garmenly gets more valuable the more sites and agents you add, but it is not gated behind a minimum size.
Are you going to be around in five years?
A fair question to ask any vendor. Two practical protections: full data export at any time, and clear written terms. We would rather you choose us because staying is easy than because leaving is hard.
Where is my data stored?
Australia by default. Regional hosting is available for United Kingdom, United States and Canadian customers. We will confirm the specifics for your jurisdiction before you sign.
How do I get in touch?
Email hello@garmenly.com, call 1800 314 707, or book a demo and we will call you. Each one reaches the people actually building the product.
Come and pick holes in it.
Bring your hardest workflow — the one your current system cannot handle. That is the most useful demo we can give you.