Horrea x byrd: How Aperol sells merch online across Europe

Aperol brought the brand. Horrea brought the webshop. byrd brought the fulfillment, so a global icon could go direct without becoming a logistics company.

There are brands you know by a color. Aperol is one of them: that unmistakable orange, the ritual of the spritz, a name carrying decades of brand equity built by the Campari Group. So when Aperol decided to sell branded merchandise directly to fans across Europe, glassware, textiles, and lifestyle pieces stamped with one of the world's most recognizable brands, the bar was set before the first order ever shipped. Everything a customer touched, from the shop to the parcel on their doorstep, had to feel like Aperol.

What the company did not want was to become a logistics company. So Horrea built and runs the shop on Shopify Plus. And for the physical side, storing, picking, packing, and shipping every order across Europe, Horrea chose byrd.

Aperol × Horrea × byrd at a glance

The challenge: a marquee brand experience, delivered market by market

Selling merchandise for a brand like Aperol is not the same as selling merchandise. The product is the brand. A chipped glass or a tote in a plain brown box reflects on Aperol, not on the warehouse that packed it, and that is a brand the Campari Group has spent generations building. The unboxing had to hold up in every market, from the first order.

At the same time, the goal was speed. Horrea's approach was a lean MVP: launch in two pilot markets, learn, then expand on the strength of the results. So Aperol did not need a fulfillment setup for one country. It needed a partner it could start small with and scale into new markets without signing warehouse leases, negotiating carrier contracts, or standing up an operations team each time. Glassware added a physical problem on top of the brand one: fragile, awkward to pack, and unforgiving of rough handling.

Why Horrea chose byrd

When Horrea evaluated the logistics side of the project on Aperol's behalf, the questions were the ones a brand of this caliber would ask first: how flexible is the warehouse, how automated are the processes, and can the partner support multiple locations as the shop expands?

“One of the main criteria was the extent of the warehouse's flexibility, the level of process automation, and whether they support multiple locations. The good thing about byrd is that they're always willing to find a solution for your logistics request. Their platform is super easy to operate and connect to external tools, Shopify in our case, and they supported our expansion into the UK as well.”

Logistics Manager at Horrea

That last point got tested. The shop launched from one fulfillment center in Germany; in March 2026 a second came online in the UK. Nothing changed in how Horrea works: same dashboard, same data, same dedicated account manager, same Shopify integration. byrd carried the operational side, and the decisions were made together. Growing the footprint never turned into growing the admin.

Fragile goods get their own playbook

43% of Aperol's orders with byrd are flagged fragile, and every order goes through byrd's packaging service rather than a standard pick-and-pack. Horrea specified cartons and inserts around the products rather than pulling them from a template. Carrier routing follows the same logic: byrd's multi-carrier network routes by destination and by what the shipment needs, which is paramount for shipping products to a total of 29 countries.

The result: a brand-worthy experience, and a partner that picks up the phone

The shop now ships a five-figure order volume a year, out of two pilot markets that became 29 countries. Germany takes the clear majority, followed by Italy, Belgium, the UK, Austria, and the Netherlands, with a tail reaching as far as Iceland. Volume has grown strongly year on year.

Aperol is a summer drink, and the merch follows it. The summer peak runs several times deeper than the previous autumn's quietest month, absorbed without Horrea forecasting warehouse staff. Orders leave within a day, and transit times have come down year on year.

Merchandise also runs on supplier deliveries that slip.

“byrd's account manager is really responsive and ready to support us no matter the time. Once we had an unexpected delivery from the supplier, and byrd managed it quickly and on time, getting the products labeled and available for sale in the shortest time possible.”

Logistics Manager at Horrea

A warehouse moves boxes. A partner absorbs the surprises. Asked whether they would recommend byrd to another agency, the answer was short.

“Yes, definitely. You can really rely on these guys.”

Logistics Manager at Horrea

Ask byrd the same question about Horrea, and the credit runs the other way.

“Working with an agency that knows exactly what its brand needs makes our job a lot clearer. Horrea came to us with a precise picture of what the Aperol shop had to deliver, and from there it was on us to make the logistics match it in every market.”

Petra Dobrocka, CCO and Co-Founder of byrd

Key results of the partnership

• A global brand launched a direct-to-consumer merch shop without building its own logistics: no warehouses, no carrier contracts, no in-house fulfillment team.
• A five-figure order volume in a year
• Pan-European reach without pan-European admin
• A setup that can flex as the business grows, with byrd handling the operational complexity while Horrea keeps the decisions and full visibility.
• Packaging and carrier routing built around fragile products, so glassware and textiles run side by side in the same operation with different handling profiles.
• Brand-worthy unboxing that reflects Aperol's brand equity, on every parcel, in every market.
• Seamless Shopify integration connecting the shop to byrd's warehouse management, orders flowing from checkout to dispatch automatically.
• A responsive, dedicated account manager who handled an unplanned supplier delivery, labeling and listing the stock fast so nothing stalled sales.

Looking ahead: more markets, more volume, the same experience

New collections, bigger campaigns, and more countries are all in front of the shop, on a setup that has already absorbed one expansion without a rebuild. For Horrea, that means growing with a logistics partner they do not have to think about. For byrd, it's exactly the kind of growth the network is built to carry and the kind of partner we love to work with.

👉 Visit Horrea's page or the Aperol online shop