How Willoway Nurseries Has Mastered E-Commerce Order Fulfillment

By Brian D. Sparks|August 22, 2026

In early August, Willoway Nurseries in northern Ohio hosted its customers for a tour of the company’s trial gardens and nurseries. The tour also included a closer look at the company’s e-commerce operations area. Willoway was an early entry into the e-commerce market; it first started accepting online orders in 2017.

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Willoway has already shipped 1.5 million plants in 2026. All photos: Brian Sparks
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The key to efficiency is scannable codes on each pot and box
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Order pulling station
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Sorting station
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Bagging station
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Boxing station
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The unique box design is designed to help protect plant pots during shipping.
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Willoway has updated its warehouse management software.

But Willoway doesn’t take orders directly from consumers; it works with a network of independent garden centers, and all plants are ordered through the garden center’s website that feeds directly into Willoway’s e-commerce system. Customers receive their plants with labels showing plants “brought to you by your local garden center.”

“IGCs don’t often have the space to hold enough inventory for what their customers might be shopping for, and that’s where we come in,” says Sam Brady, Operation Supervisor of E-Commerce at Willoway.

All orders received from IGCs are processed and shipped the next day, the only exception being plants not available based on time of year. In those cases, the customer is notified when the plants will be available and when they are shipped.

Willoway has already shipped 1.5 million plants in 2026, and Brady says the e-commerce market is only going to keep growing. That’s why Willoway has invested in an expansion of its current e-commerce order processing and shipping space. “We want to grow our e-commerce business by 50% each year,” Brady says. On its busiest day Willoway processes 4,000 plant orders, and the expansion will allow for 5,000 orders per day.

Space is not the only thing Willoway has invested in to keep up with demand. The company has also updated its warehouse management software and has a dedicated e-commerce inventory system.

The key to efficiency is scannable codes on each pot and box, from the “shopping areas” (where orders are pulled) to a sorting station to a bagging station to boxing and packaging (see the slideshow above for a closer look).

The QR code on each box provides information on plant certification, which is important because Willoway can ship to 46 of the 48 contiguous states in the U.S. (Montana and Idaho being the only exception). Orders to the West Coast are processed weekly because the plants first need to be treated for the potential of Japanese beetles. All plants are watered the day before they are shipped.