Building Hortipak's E-Commerce Engine
About the Project
Hortipak creates recyclable printed plant labels, handles, seed packets and point-of-sale materials for the horticultural industry. With thousands of stock labels for popular plant varieties across the UK and Ireland, they needed an e-commerce platform that could handle complex product catalogues and make ordering genuinely easy for busy commercial growers.
Easy access
to thousands of products
Reduced admin
time across the board
Inventory sync
daily with Aqilla
Key problems:
Hortipak's business was growing, but their digital setup couldn't keep up:
- The existing site buckled under the weight of thousands of products — finding a specific plant variety label meant scrolling endlessly or giving up and phoning instead.
- Product data, customer records and order information lived in separate systems, creating hours of manual data entry and room for costly errors.
- Commercial growers ordering in bulk couldn't see real-time stock levels or get accurate shipping costs upfront, leading to frustrating back-and-forth.
- The checkout process lacked flexible payment options and proper shipping configuration for different order sizes and delivery zones.
- Without API connections, updating product information or managing seasonal offerings meant manually changing hundreds of listings one by one.
Our Solution
We built Hortipak an e-commerce platform that handles complexity without fuss:
- Created brand guidelines covering logo placement, colour palette (the distinctive green and white), typography rules, and how the brand works across packaging, web, and marketing materials.
- Redesigned the website with a clean layout that puts search front and centre — customers can now type in a plant variety name and find exactly what they need in seconds.
- Integrated APIs that connect the e-commerce platform with inventory management, so stock levels update automatically and low-stock alerts flag before items run out.
- Built a product database that handles thousands of SKUs with custom fields for plant variety, label type, size options, and seasonal availability — making it easy to add new products or update existing ones.
- Set up Stripe as the payment gateway with support for invoicing and account-based ordering, giving commercial customers the payment flexibility they need.
The result is an e-commerce platform that handles thousands of products without breaking a sweat.
The Results (First 6 Months)
The Results
(First 6 Months)
- Search actually works now: customers find specific plant labels in under 30 seconds instead of scrolling through endless pages or calling to ask.
- Cut daily admin time: API connections eliminated manual data entry between systems, freeing up staff to focus on customer support and product development.
- Online Order volume increased: the streamlined checkout and clear product information removed friction, making it easier for nurseries to place larger, repeat orders.
- Fewer order errors: real-time inventory sync means customers see accurate stock levels, and automatic order processing reduces mistakes from manual entry.
Final Thoughts
This wasn't just about building a shop — it was about supporting the growers who depend on Hortipak to get plants to market properly labelled and ready to sell. When a nursery is prepping thousands of bedding plants for spring season, they need labels fast, accurate, and hassle-free. No time for phone calls to check stock or sorting out invoice errors. Hortipak's new platform handles all that complexity behind the scenes so growers can focus on what they do best: growing brilliant plants. That's infrastructure worth building.