Ladybird Fruit Tree Nursery is home to Australia’s largest collection of fruit trees. The family-owned Queensland business supplies everyone from first-time balcony gardeners to commercial orchardists.
Greenhat Services rebuilt it from a slow, fragmented WooCommerce store into a unified Shopify platform that runs the online shop and the physical nursery as a single operation. The problem was harder than a standard migration: selling living, perishable, seasonally finite stock across two channels without ever promising a customer a plant that isn’t there.
Two disconnected systems became one. Shopify’s multi-location inventory now governs both the website and the in-nursery POS. Orders are capped at real stock on hand, and stock levels stay private: customers see in stock or sold out, never a countdown. In-stock products are prioritised throughout search and category listings, so attention goes to what can actually be bought. Sold-out varieties capture demand through an email and SMS waitlist, turning lost sales into propagation signals for the following season.
Quarantine restrictions limit shipping to four states, so geographic eligibility is enforced inside the cart rather than at payment failure. Starshipit sets one delivery price per postcode that does not climb as more plants are added, allocates between Australia Post and Aramex based on location and product, and drives branded tracking and one-click thermal labels. Local pickup closes the loop between storefront and nursery.
The design is warm and photography-forward, built mobile-first. Every product page carries Ladybird’s horticultural expertise through a dedicated “How to Grow” section drawn from structured product data. Full URL and metadata mapping preserved years of organic search equity.
The result is a faster, calmer shop for customers, and a platform the nursery’s small team can run.
