Sukulenty Samek

The brief

Sukulenty Samek is an e-shop selling succulents, cacti, rock garden plants and houseplants from its own production. Everything is grown and propagated in a greenhouse in eastern Bohemia and shipped from there every week to customers in Czechia and across the EU. This is not client work but a business partnership: my partner grows and sells, I build and run everything between the greenhouse and the customer that lives on a server.

Selling living goods online is a harder business than selling t-shirts. Stock is not ordered, it is grown — availability is by the piece, set by the season, restocked as plants mature. The goods have to survive the carrier. Moving plants across EU borders is regulated in ways an ordinary shop never meets. And the sale does not end at delivery: the plant has to make it in the customer's home as well.

None of that can be worked around. It has to be built into the system.

The solution

The shop runs on Nette 3 with Tailwind, built around how the plant trade actually works rather than around a template.

The catalogue assumes a range that keeps changing. Plants sit in three categories — succulents, cacti, rock garden plants — and alongside them in themed collections grouped to make choosing easier. What is in stock has a listing of its own: available means grown, and restocking is continuous.

An order runs from the cart through a customer account to payment: bank transfer, QR code, card via ComGate Payments, PayPal on request. Shipping goes by Zásilkovna, PPL or DPD with the price shown up front and packing free. A single plant costs tens to low hundreds of crowns, so shipping is a visible part of the price, not a footnote. Parcels leave at the start of the week, Monday to Wednesday, no later than seven working days after payment clears.

Selling into the EU is a second market, not a translated page. A full English version that reaches the catalogue, categories included; a CZK/EUR currency switch; a euro account with its own IBAN so EU customers pay in euros. Then the regulation: every parcel carries an invoice, the mandatory EU plant passports — in the box and by email — and short instructions on what to do with the plant once it is unpacked. Plants are checked before dispatch and shipped rooted, in their pot and substrate, in eco-friendly packaging. Growing guides for succulents, cacti and rock garden plants live on the site, because the sale does not end at the door.

My role

The whole shop, end to end: the Nette application, catalogue, cart, orders, payment gateway integration, front end and production operations. Growing, photographing and describing the plants is the greenhouse side.

I have worked on it continuously since 2023. There was no handover — the season changes, the range changes, and the system has to keep pace with the business, not the other way round. Otherwise I work as a CTO and build sites and products for clients; here I sit on the company's side, and operations are mine.

The outcome

A working e-commerce business: a shop that has been running since 2023 and ships orders every week to Czechia and the EU.

Living goods do not fit a template shop. Availability, shipping, regulation and care after delivery all had to be designed around how the plant trade really works. The system was built around the business, not the business around the system.