Case study

A content-rich Shopify theme for an NYC indoor gardening brand. Learn hub, comparison tables, grow-light calculator.

Urban Leaf sells indoor herb gardens, microgreens kits, mushroom kits, and grow-light accessories to first-time city growers. Muscled built a 40+ template Shopify theme with a 12-page educational learn hub, per-category comparison tables, an interactive grow-light calculator, custom cart drawer and hero, and a dedicated speed-optimization pass. 2+ year multi-project ongoing engagement across three repos.

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By the numbers

The numbers speak for themselves

Vault-backed numbers. No presentation-grade estimates. Each one is reconcilable to the founder's own reporting.

Long-running engagement
2+ yrs

Continuous design-dev relationship from Jul 2023 through Nov 2025 across three GitHub repos and rotating developer streams.

SRC: vault GitHub repo history, 2026-05-31

Commits on the main repo
500+

500+ commits and 300+ merged PRs on the new-urban-leaf production repo, spanning five design iterations (D3, D4, D6, D8, D9) and a dedicated speed-optimization branch.

SRC: vault GitHub repo history, 2026-05-31

Custom page templates
40+

Educational learn hub (12 category-specific learn pages), grow-light calculator pages, sustainability brand pages, quiz, lookbook, bundle builder, CRO product templates, and EComposer / Avada SEO integrations.

SRC: vault repo template list, 2026-05-31

Urban Leaf monthly revenue

Post-rebuild growth
Desktop & Mobile

The full homepage, shown two ways

Two side-by-side screenshots of the long homepage. Hover the desktop card to slowly scroll the screenshot top to bottom, so visitors see the entire page without leaving this one.

  • Desktop · full homepage after rebuild
    40+
    Custom page templates (670 mo)
    /mo at peak
  • Mobile-first after rebuild
    Mobile traffic share
    670 mo
    Engagement length
The work

How the engagement unfolded

  1. v1 initial theme scaffold

    Jul 2023 — Aug 2023

    Initial Shopify theme build for geturbanleaf.com. Single repo (muscled-clients/urban-leaf) with a full Liquid/CSS/JS theme baseline. Developer branches (Nazmul, Haris, Mahmood) seeded the early iteration work before the v2 redesign took over.

    • Shopify theme scaffold
    • Liquid baseline
    • Initial repo
    • ~2 weeks

  2. v2 redesign on parallel developer streams

    Aug 2023 — Sep 2023

    Version 2 redesign run on a dev store with four named developer streams (Nazmul, Hamza, Qaisar, Sohail) and three design iterations (d1, d3, d8). 57 commits and 11 merged PRs in roughly a month. Intermediate build that fed directly into the long-running v3 engagement.

    • v2 redesign
    • 4 parallel devs
    • d1 / d3 / d8 iterations
    • 11 PRs merged
    • Dev store

  3. v3 main engagement — production theme + learn hub

    Aug 2023 — Nov 2025

    Primary long-running engagement on the new-urban-leaf production repo. 500+ commits, 300+ merged PRs, five tracked design iterations (D3 speed, D4 bundles, D6 cart drawer and hero, D8 comparison tables and learn section, D9 product grid), a free-shipping bar, and a dedicated speed-optimization branch.

    Custom sections include a grow-light calculator, custom cart drawer, custom hero banner, product bundle / set sections, and per-category comparison tables (microgreens, mushrooms, grow lights, potting soil). 40+ page templates cover a full educational learn hub, a sustainability / carbon-negative brand page, a master-gardener page, a quiz, a lookbook, and CRO-optimized product templates.

    • Production theme
    • 500+ commits
    • 300+ PRs
    • 5 design iterations (D3-D9)
    • 40+ page templates
    • Learn hub
    • Grow-light calculator
    • Comparison tables
    • Speed optimization
Project overview

What we built

Urban Leaf is a New York City-based DTC brand selling indoor and urban gardening kits to first-time city growers. Founded by Nate (ex-finance) and Rob (Ph.D. in vegetated infrastructure), with a sustainability-forward, carbon-negative brand position. Products include microgreens kits, herb gardens, bottle herb gardens, mushroom kits, grow lights, seeds, soils, and nutrients. Sold on Shopify, Amazon, and Walmart.

Muscled engaged with Urban Leaf from Jul 2023 through Nov 2025 across three GitHub repos: an initial v1 scaffold, a one-month v2 redesign run on parallel developer streams (Nazmul, Hamza, Qaisar, Sohail), and a 500+ commit v3 production engagement on the new-urban-leaf repo. The v3 engagement covered five tracked design iterations (D3 speed, D4 bundles, D6 cart drawer + hero, D8 comparison tables + learn section, D9 product grid), 40+ page templates, and a dedicated speed-optimization branch.

In their own words

(Testimonial TBD — vault permission_to_publish is open. Founders publicly known as Nate and Rob.)

Urban Leaf is a New York City-based DTC indoor gardening brand founded by Nate (ex-finance, NYC) and Rob (Ph.D. in vegetated infrastructure). Mission centers on helping city dwellers grow fresh, nutrient-dense food in small spaces. Product line spans microgreens kits, herb gardens, bottle herb gardens, mushroom kits, grow lights, seeds, soils, and nutrients. Sustainability-forward with a carbon-negative positioning. Sold on Shopify, Amazon, and Walmart.

Urban Leaf teamFounders
The challenge

What was holding them back?

Indoor gardening is an education-first category. Urban Leaf's customers aren't buying SKUs, they're buying a system that fits their windowsill and matches their skill level. A standard Shopify catalog flow couldn't carry that conversation, and a multi-category product line meant every category needed its own comparison surface and learning content.

  1. 01

    Indoor gardening is education-first, but the store was catalog-only

    Most Urban Leaf customers are first-time city growers buying their first windowsill garden, microgreens kit, or mushroom grow kit. A standard catalog flow skipped the questions they actually had (which kit fits my space, what does carbon-negative mean for this product, how do I keep these alive) before they ever got to a buy decision.

  2. 02

    Multiple product categories with no per-category comparison surface

    Urban Leaf sells across at least six categories — microgreens, herbs, mushrooms, grow lights, seeds and soil, and bundles. Without per-category comparison content, customers couldn't tell which microgreen kit, which mushroom variety, or which grow-light setup matched their space and intent.

  3. 03

    Grow-light buying decisions need a tool, not a spec sheet

    Choosing a grow light requires translating window size, plant type, and apartment lighting into a wattage and coverage answer. Most customers don't have that translation memorized, so spec-sheet product pages were a dead end.

  4. 04

    Theme speed needed dedicated attention

    As the theme grew to cover 40+ page templates with educational content blocks, comparison tables, and interactive tools, page weight and load behavior needed a focused speed pass rather than incidental cleanup.

Before / After

Before and after

Before

After

Funnel collapse: we removed a full page from the path to purchase.

Solutions

What we built to fix it

Each fix maps to a specific lift in the funnel.

  • Educational learn hub built into the Shopify theme

    A full learn hub with twelve category-specific pages (microgreens, mushrooms, herbs, leafy greens, lighting, nutrients, pots and plants, seeds, soil, fruits and vegetables, plus a master-gardener page). Educational content lives inside the theme so it loads, ranks, and links alongside product pages instead of in a disconnected blog.

  • Per-category comparison tables as native Liquid sections

    D8-iteration custom sections deliver dedicated comparison tables for microgreens, mushrooms, grow lights, and potting soils. Customers compare across kits inside the storefront instead of opening five product pages in five tabs.

  • Interactive grow-light calculator + standalone tool pages

    Custom grow-light-calculator Liquid section plus two dedicated calculator page templates. Inputs space and plant intent, returns a grow-light recommendation. Removes the spec-sheet translation step that was blocking the lighting category.

  • Custom cart drawer, hero banner, bundles + dedicated speed branch

    D6 iteration shipped a custom cart drawer, custom hero banner, and custom collection banner. D4 iteration shipped product-bundle, product-set, and article-products-table sections. A separate D3 speed-optimization branch handled the focused performance pass.

The stack

What it was built on

Tools picked for the job, not for the resume.

  • Shopify
    Platform
  • Liquid
    Templating
  • Vanilla JS
    Frontend
  • CSS
    Styling
  • EComposer
    Page builder
  • Avada SEO
    SEO
How we engineer performance

Speed is a revenue lever, not a vanity score

Every Muscled build is engineered to the same standard. The numbers below are the published industry benchmarks we design against, not stand-ins for any one client's figures.

conversions per 0.1s of load-time improvement on ecommerce sites.

+8.4%

SRC: DELOITTE / GOOGLE

conversion rate for stores loading under 2s, vs the ~1.4% Shopify average.

2.4%

SRC: SHOPIFY PERFORMANCE DATA

conversion lift per 1s of mobile load-time gained, where 90% of traffic lives.

+10-20%

SRC: SHOPIFY MOBILE BENCHMARKS

// OUR PERFORMANCE GATE we don't ship unless field Core Web Vitals hold: LCP ≤ 2.5s · INP ≤ 200ms · CLS < 0.1 (p75, mobile)

Capability surface

The techniques behind a build like this

Educational learn hub

  • Learn hub
  • 12 category learn pages
  • Master-gardener page
  • Microgreens learn page
  • Mushrooms learn page
  • Herbs learn page
  • Leafy greens learn page
  • Lighting learn page
  • Nutrients learn page
  • Seeds learn page
  • Soil learn page
  • Pots / plants learn page
  • Fruits + vegetables learn page

Custom Liquid sections

  • Grow-light calculator
  • Custom cart drawer (D6)
  • Custom hero banner (D6)
  • D4 announcement bar
  • D4 article-products table
  • D4 custom set bundle
  • D4 products bundle
  • D4 products set
  • D6 AB crop
  • D6 collection banner
  • D6 text-with-image
  • D8 rich text
  • D8 image-with-text
  • D8 learning section
  • D8 text banner

Brand + content pages

  • Carbon-negative page
  • Lookbook
  • Bundle builder
  • Story page
  • FAQ
  • Testimonials
  • Contact
  • Nutrients page
  • Quiz
  • Sale page
  • About-us (multiple iterations)
  • CRO-optimized product template
  • Story product template

Tooling, comparison tables + speed

  • D3 speed-optimization branch
  • Grow-light calculator pages
  • Per-category comparison tables
  • Microgreens comparison table
  • Mushrooms comparison table
  • Grow-light comparison table
  • Potting-soil comparison table
  • Free-shipping bar branch
  • Custom product grid (D9)
  • EComposer page builder
  • Avada SEO integration
Storefronts

One build. Multiple markets.

Same theme code across markets, with localized pricing, currency, and region-specific content routed automatically.

  • United States

    Primary storefront / NYC indoor gardening DTC
    • Shopify theme
    • 40+ page templates
    • Educational learn hub
    • Grow-light calculator
    • Per-category comparison tables
    • Custom cart drawer
    • Carbon-negative brand page
    United States screenshot
    Served from the same Shopify Markets build. Dedicated capture not included.
Full build · sections

Every section, built mobile-first

The full build is many numbered sections, each designed for the phone first. The rail below shows a sample. Scroll horizontally to step through.

The results

What the work delivered

Each number is reconcilable to the founder's own reporting.

Long-running engagement
2+ yrs

Continuous design-dev relationship from Jul 2023 through Nov 2025 across three GitHub repos and rotating developer streams.

SRC: vault GitHub repo history, 2026-05-31

Commits on the main repo
500+

500+ commits and 300+ merged PRs on the new-urban-leaf production repo, spanning five design iterations (D3, D4, D6, D8, D9) and a dedicated speed-optimization branch.

SRC: vault GitHub repo history, 2026-05-31

Custom page templates
40+

Educational learn hub (12 category-specific learn pages), grow-light calculator pages, sustainability brand pages, quiz, lookbook, bundle builder, CRO product templates, and EComposer / Avada SEO integrations.

SRC: vault repo template list, 2026-05-31

Ready to ship yours?

Let's talk about what you want to ship.

A 2+ year multi-project ongoing engagement that grew a Shopify theme into a 40+ template, learn-hub-led storefront. Educational content lives inside the theme, per-category comparison tables and a grow-light calculator handle the high-friction decisions, and a dedicated speed branch keeps the build fast.

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