Hornby Organic
A Comox bar-maker selling to Whole Foods, Save-On, and a hundred independents — running wholesale through an application form and an orders@ inbox. We rebuilt the whole flow.
Platform
Shopify + wholesale app
Sells
Organic bars, by the case
Buys wholesale
Grocers, cafés, gyms
Today
Apply → approve → email
The tell
On the same day, the same six SKUs read “sold out” on one collection page and “in stock” on another.
That’s what happens when a wholesale layer is bolted on with a discount app instead of built. A buyer planning a reorder can’t trust what they see — so they email to confirm. Every order becomes a conversation.
How wholesale works today
Find the wholesale page
“Discounted Pricing · Free Shipping · Dedicated Support Team.”
Benefits are listed, but no prices, minimums, or specifics anywhere.
Fill out an application
“Fill out the form HERE… we will activate your account if you qualify.”
Name, company, website, phone — and then you wait.
Wait for manual approval
“We will reach out shortly with the next steps.”
A human reviews every applicant before a single price appears.
Order & re-order by email
“…contact our team at orders@hornbyorganic.com.”
Samples, POS material, and volume pricing all run through the inbox.
A self-serve portal on their Shopify
Same catalog, same fulfillment. Approved buyers run their whole account themselves — and it thinks in cases, not units, because that’s how Hornby sells.
Pemberton Valley Grocery
Tier 2 · multi-location
- In stock$21.50/cs–4+
Chocolate Espresso
Hornby Bar · 12 × 80g
- In stock$21.50/cs–3+
Chocolate Chip Peanut Butter
Hornby Bar · 12 × 80g
- In stock$21.50/cs–2+
Oatmeal Raisin
Hornby Bar · 12 × 80g
- Low · ships ~5 days$13.20/cs–3+
OSnack Peanut Butter & Jam
OSnack · 12 × 45g
- In stock$13.20/cs–0+
OSnack Chocolate Chip Banana
OSnack · 12 × 45g
- Backordered$21.50/cs–0+
Pumpkin Fudge
Hornby Bar · 12 × 80g
Line minimum: 2 cases per SKU, enforced before checkout.
Drops straight into fulfillment. Zero emails.
Wholesale prices are illustrative — Hornby hides real wholesale rates behind approval; retail and case prices were observed live.
One buyer, one minute
Pemberton Valley Grocery logs in. Their dashboard shows a saved Reorder: November mix. One click loads it. The portal flags “OSnack PB&J — low stock, ships ~5 days” live, so they swap a case. The cart nudges them toward $350 for free freight, they add one more, and submit — straight into Shopify.
The numbers, on the table
To build
$4,000
Teardown → scoped → shipped on your Shopify.
To run
$300/mo
Hosting, maintenance, support, ongoing fit.
Payback
~4 accounts
Year one (~$7,600) is covered by roughly 4 new wholesale accounts ordering monthly — or a handful of extra reorders the self-serve flow makes frictionless.
Payback is illustrative — modelled on a ~$400 average wholesale order at ~40% product margin; we’ll run it on Hornby’s real numbers on the call.
This is a spec teardown