A tailor's counter has a rhythm. Someone arrives holding a pair of trousers and asks what a hem costs. The answer depends on four things the customer has not thought about — the fabric, whether the original stitch has to be kept, whether the trousers have already been shortened once, and how soon they want them back — and by the time all four have been established, the shop has spent three minutes on a fifteen-dollar job it may not get.
None of that is a reason to stop answering. It is a reason to answer the part that has one answer in public, and to put the part that does not in a sentence the customer can read while they are standing there. That is what a single page does, and it has one property worth more than the design: its address never changes. That is what lets one QR code be printed, taped to the counter, stuck on the mirror and dropped into the review card, and still be correct after every price change for the next five years.
Two tables, because the counter sells two different things
An alteration shop usually does two jobs that look like one on the receipt. The first is alteration, where the unit is the operation on a garment: a hem, a sleeve, a zip. The second is cleaning and pressing, where the unit is the garment itself: one two-piece suit, one coat, one shirt. The same customer hands over both, and a single flat list that mixes them ends up reprinted the first time either side changes.
Putting them in two tables also fixes a quieter problem: the alteration table can carry a day count per row, and the cleaning table does not need one, because the answer there is a fixed cycle the shop already repeats every week.
The alteration table: operation, garment, from-price, working days
Four columns is what a customer reads on a phone without pinching, and the fourth column is the one nearly every paper price list leaves out. The figures below show the shape of that table — they are an example of layout, not a market average, because alteration prices move with the city, the rent and the fabric, and a shop should set its own numbers from its own week:
| Operation | Usually applies to | From | Working days |
|---|---|---|---|
| Trouser hem, plain | Cotton, wool, linen, chinos | $15 | 2 |
| Trouser hem, original stitch kept | Denim, heavy twill | $22 | 3 |
| Sleeve shortened, plain cuff | Shirt, blouse, knitwear | $20 | 2 |
| Sleeve shortened, working buttons | Jacket, blazer, coat | $35 | 3 |
| Waist taken in | Trousers, skirt | $25 | 3 |
| Zip replaced | Trousers, skirt, dress, jacket | $28 | 3 |
| Jacket relined | Lined jacket or coat | $85 | 5–7 |
| Dress or skirt hem, lined | Lined dress, skirt | $30 | 3 |
| Repair or visible patch | Any garment | $12 | 2 |
| Buttons, buttonholes, hooks | Any garment | $8 | 1 |
One line under the table saves the most arguments: “From-prices are for the work named, on a garment that has not been altered at that seam before. We confirm the price when we see it, before any work starts.” It answers the two objections at once — why the number moved, and whether it can move after the garment is already cut.
Why the word in the price column is “from”
An alteration is priced by how much of the garment has to come apart, not by what the operation is called. Two hems that look identical from a metre away can differ by a factor of three, and six things account for almost all of it:
- Lining. Anything lined is opened and closed twice. A reline is a rebuild, not a repair.
- Construction. A canvassed jacket has an inside that must be put back as it was found; a fused one does not.
- Embellishment. Beads, sequins and lace appliqué have to be lifted, kept in order and re-sewn — by hand, and usually twice.
- Leather, suede and coated fabric. A needle mark stays. There is no second attempt, so the work is done slowly and sometimes refused.
- What was already done. A hem let down twice keeps a crease line where the old fold was; hiding it costs more than making a new one.
- Access. Side seams, vents, pockets and waistbands in the way of the seam that actually needs moving.
An exact price in print is a promise the shop will break within a month, and the customer will believe the paper over the person holding the garment. “From” plus this list is the same promise, made honestly — and it is shorter to read than the sentence a tailor would otherwise say out loud.
The second question is “when”, and it belongs in the same row
A day count is a different kind of number from a price: it is a promise about the shop's queue, not about the garment. Two habits keep it honest.
The first is to count in working days and to print the days the shop is closed, because “three days” said on a Thursday means different things in a shop that closes Sunday and Monday and in one that closes Saturday and Sunday. The second is to state the rush rule once, as a rule: same-week work adds half again, next-day work is quoted at the counter and only when the machine is free. That is an example rather than a recommendation — the number is the shop's to set — but a printed rule stops the negotiation that otherwise happens while someone is standing there with a bag, and it protects the queue of customers who did not ask for speed.
The other half of the counter, priced by garment
Cleaning, pressing and small repairs are priced per item, and the list is short enough to print in full. The column that matters here is not the price but the scope line — what is included, and what is quoted separately:
| Item | Clean and press | Press only | Included / extra |
|---|---|---|---|
| Two-piece suit | $24 | $12 | spot clean included; stains that need a specialist are quoted first |
| Trousers or skirt | $12 | $6 | crease set where marked |
| Coat, short | $22 | $10 | loose buttons re-sewn, up to three |
| Dress | $18 | $9 | beading is not pressed; it is worked around |
| Shirt or blouse | $7 | $4 | collar and cuffs |
| Duvet or blanket | $30 | — | drying time is part of the day count, not the queue |
The scope line does the unglamorous work. “Spot clean included, specialist stains quoted first” is the difference between a customer who feels cheated when a mark comes back and one who was told, in writing, before they paid. It is also the difference between two people disagreeing at the counter and one sentence being read twice.
What the ticket must not carry
A paper ticket and the page must not compete. The ticket belongs to one garment and one job: the number, the name, the date promised, the price quoted by the person who saw it. The page belongs to the shop, and carries only the list price and the clauses.
The reason is arithmetic. If the ticket and the page disagree — because the page was updated and a stack of old tickets was not — the customer believes the lower of the two, and they are right to. Keeping the quoted figure on the ticket alone also means the page needs no customer records at all: no names, no phone numbers, nothing to lose. A public page of hours and prices is the cheapest privacy policy an alteration shop will ever write.
Why the code holds the address and not the price list
A QR code contains a string. If that string is the shop's page address, the code is a door, and everything behind the door can change without touching the door. If the string is a PDF of the price list, the code is a photocopy of last season's prices, and the day the list changes the card on the counter becomes a lie.
This is arithmetic rather than taste: a file uploaded again gets a new address, so a printed code cannot follow it. A page address does not change. That is the whole of the rule, and it is why the edit link matters more than the design — change a price, keep the address, and nothing on the counter, the mirror or the window is reprinted.
Three pieces to print, measured
The print files this site produces are measured, not estimated, so the sizes below are the actual millimetres of the PDFs, at error correction M with a four-module margin (33 modules of code plus the margin, 41 squares across):
| Piece | Sheet | QR code | Reads at |
|---|---|---|---|
| Counter card | 93.0 × 127.5 mm | 48 mm | about 0.5 m — the person paying, phone in hand |
| 70 mm sticker | 70 mm round | 40 mm | about 0.4 m — the fitting-room mirror |
| A4 door poster | 210 × 297 mm | 126 mm | about 1.3 m — nose against the glass |
The distances come from the industry rule of thumb of one unit of code per ten units of distance — a rule for a clean, matte, well-lit code and an ordinary phone camera. It is not part of the QR standard (ISO/IEC 18004), and it is a floor, not a guarantee: behind glass that reflects the street, under a gloss laminate, or through a bowed plastic sleeve, plan for one per eight and expect the phone to need a second longer.
In an alteration shop the counter card is the piece that gets scanned, and the window poster is the one that gets seen. The customer who needs the price is already standing still with the garment in their hands — that is the moment a code is worth printing, and it is about half a metre from the phone. A sticker at mirror height catches the second visit: the person who has just decided the hem was right and now wants to know about the waist.
What this page does not do
It does not run the till, the tickets or the queue, and it does not take bookings. Software that holds customer records, prints numbered tickets, texts a customer when a garment is ready, or takes deposits is a different product with its own monthly price; a shop that needs those should keep them. This article quotes none of those vendors' prices, because no vendor's pricing page was read on a dated day for this piece — a price without a date is a rumour, and the three-year calculator on this site does that comparison with the shop's own monthly figure whenever it wants one.
What the page replaces is the paper and the reply: the laminated A4 with two prices crossed out and a pen mark, the “DM us for prices” that a customer will not do, and the three minutes of “how much for a hem, and can I have it Friday?” that a tailor answers with a tape measure round their neck.
Said plainly: an alteration shop with no tables does not need the table pieces. It needs the live page, the counter card, the mirror sticker and the window poster — which is exactly the eight-file version of the kit, at the same price as the fifteen-file one, not a cheaper version with the useful parts removed.
The cost of the paper, dated
| Option | Price | Renews? | What you get |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free page | $0 | never | one live page — prices, hours, address, tap-to-call, a visit count |
| Turnkey kit, no tables | $49 once | never | live page + 8 files: delivery note, A4 poster, QR image, print price list, Business Profile kit, edit runbook, review cards, bring-a-friend cards — built by hand, within 24 hours |
| Turnkey kit, with tables | $89 / $149 once | never | the same files plus the six table pieces, two revisions and, at $149, ten social cards |
| Till or booking software | its own monthly price | monthly | tickets, customer records, reminders — not the price list on the counter |
No subscription, no account needed to order, and the price does not depend on the size of the shop — only on how many tables there are to print for. An alteration shop usually has none, so it takes the eight-file version at the same price as the fifteen-file one.
An afternoon, in five steps
- Write the list on paper first. Ten operations at most, each with the word “from” and a day count. If a row needs a paragraph, it is a clause and belongs under the table.
- Type the shop once. Name, address or Maps link, hours, the operations and the cleaning list. The page holds the same lines the printed price list uses, so there is one source of truth.
- Scan it at the real distance. Counter card at half a metre in counter light, window poster at a metre and a half from outside the glass, with the phone you actually carry.
- Print one piece before the batch. A code that fails on one card fails on fifty. Print the counter card, put it where it will live for a week, and scan it twice — once standing, once leaning over the counter.
- Put the code where the question is asked. On the counter for the person paying, at the mirror for the person who has just decided they want a second thing done.
One page, one code, printed once
The page is free and takes about thirty seconds: the shop name, a Maps link and the price list. The printed kit is one payment — $49 for the eight-file version a shop with no tables needs — written by hand and delivered within 24 hours, with no subscription behind it.
Related notes
- A hair salon price list that stops the phone calls — the same table logic with a length surcharge instead of a garment class.
- A repair shop's price board — the closest cousin: labour, parts and the line most boards leave out.
- How big the QR code has to be, in millimetres — the printing floor, the quiet zone and the 1:10 rule explained.
- The three-year cost calculator — put a monthly builder or software figure in and see the total.
Sources
Read on 14 November 2026. This site's prices — $0 free page, $49 / $89 / $149 one-off kit — are the published figures on /showcase/order. Print geometry — the 93.0 × 127.5 mm card with a 48 mm code, the 70 mm sticker with a 40 mm code, the A4 poster's 126 mm code, the four-module quiet zone and the module counts — was measured in the PDFs generated by this site's print kit (work/tools/en_print_kit.py, error correction M, four-module margin), not estimated. The printer floor of about 0.17 mm per module, the four-printer-dots-per-module recommendation (0.33 mm at 300 dpi) and the four-module margin are from Denso Wave's QR FAQ; the quiet zone as four times the X-dimension also appears in GS1's 2D Barcodes at Retail Point-of-Sale Implementation Guideline. The 1:10 code-size-to-scan-distance figure is an industry rule of thumb, not part of ISO/IEC 18004. Alteration and cleaning practice — the operation rows, the six things that move a price, the working-days column, the rush rule and the scope lines — is described as practice, and the figures in both tables are a layout example rather than an average: no survey is quoted, and a shop should print its own numbers. Till, ticketing and booking software is described as a category; no vendor price is quoted, because no vendor pricing page was read on a dated day for this article.