Garmes Is a Hybrid Consignment and Vintage Store in Collingwood – Run by 20-Year-Olds

While most 20-year-olds are still finding their feet in the real world, five mates from Canberra have flown past that uncertainty, co-running their fully fledged fashion business, Garmes.

Gaby Leydman, Amaru Ley, Tom Rush, Aiden Hellyer and Finn Harmer are the friends behind Garmes, a preloved marketplace for garments and accessories. It started back in high school, when the classmates started selling their own clothes on Depop under the name Canberra Garmes. From there, it snowballed.

“We just scaled upwards, then eventually we moved into a warehouse,” Ley says, on a video call with Leydman and Harmer. “Then we were buying clothes to sell, then last year we expanded to the point where the option to open a store was on the table.”

“We’re completely self-funded. We started with a little bit of clothes, sold them, bought some more clothes, and it naturally built up,” Harmer says.

Garmes is now the full-time job of all five co-owners. After graduating high school, they decided to focus on the business – “like taking a gap year” Harmer says – and saw it grow exponentially. “I had a bit of pushback from my parents, as I’m sure a lot of people can relate to, but the proof is in the pudding,” Ley says. “Once they saw how things were going, they were completely on board.”

In April 2025, Garmes opened its first store – in Braddon, Canberra. It’s only been a little over a year since then, and the team has put down roots in Melbourne. To date, Garmes has sold 16,820 items on Depop. Leydman says that around 60 per cent of its online orders come from Melbourne, so it made sense to open a store here.

“We walked around a lot of places in Melbourne, like Chapel Street, Sydney Road, Smith Street and Brunswick Street, and we just felt that Smith Street was where we wanted to be,” Harmer says. “We thought we’d fit in here.”

Collingwood has no shortage of consignment stores. Swop is 300 metres away and Goodbyes is 450 metres away. Garmes’ hybrid stock model is what sets it apart from competitors. Its consignment arm, Cash for Garmes, allows community members to sell their own pieces for 30 per cent cash or 50 per cent store credit of their estimated resale price. Harmer estimates 60 per cent of stock is fed through this system. The other 40 per cent comes from imported preloved clothes that Garmes purchases.

Garmes prides itself on holding a wide range of stock with varying price points. On its website, pieces go from $15 to $450. “We don’t really like it when we go into other second-hand clothing stores and it’s just way overpriced, and everyone thinks it’s cool, but no one really wants to pay that much for it,” Harmer says.

In line with how the business operates, Garmes’s new store has been put together with a lot of “trial and error” and a “DIY” mentality. The end result is a pared-back, functional space that prioritises ease of movement and product visibility. “There’s a lot of stainless steel, a big feature wall, and a seating area at the front. It’s very minimal, very industrial,” Leydman says.

Leydman, Ley and Harmer all relocated to Melbourne for this new venture. The school friends turned business partners aren’t adding roommates to that list, though; they’re living separately. How do the friends balance friendship with business? “I think sometimes it’s a challenge, but sometimes it’s the best thing in the world,” Harmer says.

“We’re coming up now on almost a decade of knowing each other; we’ve all been friends from year 7,” Ley says. “Of course, we have disagreements, and we fight every now and then – well, fairly often – but it’s just remembering that everyone’s got the right intentions, and we’re all working for the same thing.”

Garmes
212 Smith St, Collingwood
0494 744 525

Hours:
Mon to Sat 10am – 6pm
Sun 10am – 5pm

garmes.com.au
@garmes__