Built for our own shop first.
PlatenFlow is the production system we wished existed when we were running our own multi-location DTG and embroidery shop. We built it. It worked. Now other shops can use it too.
Why we built PlatenFlow
We run an apparel decoration shop. Multiple Shopify storefronts, several decoration methods, racks of orders moving through different stations every day. Like every shop our size, we shopped the legacy production software vendors. The pitches sounded fine. The contracts didn’t.
Per-station fees that scaled against us every time we added a workstation. Twelve-year-old user interfaces our operators couldn’t learn in a week. DTF and embroidery treated like add-ons bolted onto a system originally built for screen print. We wrote big checks every month for software that hit a wall every time we tried to do something a modern decoration shop actually needs.
So we built our own. Single-source codebase, decoration-method-first architecture, mobile-friendly, barcode-driven, no manuals required for operators to ramp. We’ve been running it on our own production floor for over a year. Then we made it commercial so other shops could stop paying ransom prices for software that doesn’t fit how they work.
What PlatenFlow is
A production control room for apparel decoration shops. Orders sync from Shopify. Rules engine routes each piece based on decoration method, style, location, color, customer, and store. Operators scan barcodes through their stations. Bins fill, ShipStation generates labels, bins auto-release. QC catches mistakes before they ship. Nothing in between gets lost.
PlatenFlow ships as a self-hosted application that runs on a single Windows or Mac computer in your shop and serves every other station on your local network. Cloud-hosted is available for shops that prefer it. Either way: your data stays under your control, on your hardware, with no per-station meter running in the background.
What we believe
Per-shop pricing, never per-station. The meter shouldn’t run every time you put the software on another screen.
Decoration methods are first-class. DTG, DTF, screen print, embroidery, and sublimation each get a real workflow — not a checkbox bolted onto a screen-print system.
Operators ship pieces, not software training certificates. Every screen answers one question: what needs attention right now. Barcode-first, mobile-friendly, learnable on day one.
Real production accountability. Every status change, QC pass, and reprint logged with operator, station, and timestamp. End-of-month reports that match reality.
Who’s behind PlatenFlow
PlatenFlow is built and owned by Dockery Corporation, a family-owned operating company that also runs multi-location apparel decoration shops. Jake Dockery leads software, operations runs on the same system we sell.
That’s the unfair advantage. We’re not building software for a market we read about in a deck. We’re building it for ourselves, then for shops just like ours.