Online store · 2023

Tenze — an online shop for hand-assembled makeup brushes

Інтернет-магазин українських пензлів для макіяжу ручної збірки з mix-and-match знижкою на власний набір та flow Нової Пошти

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Tenze Brushes is a Ukrainian brand of professional, hand-assembled makeup brushes with its production base in Kyiv. The site launched in 2023 as a WooCommerce shop: a catalogue of brushes and collections (Emerald, Travel Set, Tenze Home), a separate “Build your perfect set” flow with a −20% mix-and-match discount, a full accessories range (ceramic organiser cups, cases, cleaning mats, drying nets), and a Nova Poshta delivery flow with payment online or on delivery.

A mix-and-match landing page instead of a standard hero

The first screen isn’t the usual “new arrivals and bestsellers” showcase — it’s a focused promo mechanic with three prices right away: 5 brushes — 1,440 UAH / 7 brushes — 1,570 UAH / 10 brushes — 1,920 UAH, captioned “Prices include a −20% discount”. The user doesn’t see individual brushes and doesn’t pick a set from the catalogue — they choose the quantity in the set, then move to a specially filtered catalogue page with the discounted items (/shop/swoof/product_cat-akczijni/), where they can put together their own combination at a fixed price. This is a fundamentally different pricing wall than classic WooCommerce: the price isn’t the sum of the products, it’s a flat rate for quantity.

Hero 'Build your perfect set' — three price bundles of 5/7/10 brushes and a CTA 'Go to catalogue' — Three capsule chips with a price and quantity instead of a single product under the headline is a device rarely seen in the beauty niche: “pick the size of your set before you pick what’s in it”. The CTA leads to the *Sale* category rather than the general catalogue, so the user doesn’t get lost among non-discounted items.

Three collections on one screen — Emerald, Travel Set, Tenze Home

Instead of a product grid, there are three large rectangular tiles with captions and chevron pointers to the right: Emerald Collection (a professional brush line with an emerald-green lacquered handle and a gold ferrule), Travel Set Collection (a compact line in black cases), and Tenze Home Collection (a textile line — Tenze bed linen, a separate vertical brand extension). Each tile leads to its own WooCommerce category. This isn’t a “slick carousel with 12 products”, it’s a deliberate editorial showcase — the customer picks a world, not a line item.

Three collection tiles — Emerald, Travel Set, Tenze Home — Each collection is a separate WooCommerce category (`emerald-collection`, `travel-set-collection`) with its own product archive. There are no custom taxonomies for sets — everything runs on the *product* CPT with category tags. This is a classic e-commerce structure with no unnecessary customisation.

Accessories — a separate section with its own carousel

The second major section is “Brush accessories”: ceramic organiser cups in marble-green and black designs (570 UAH discounted from 720), a pink silicone brush-cleaning mat (200 UAH), a gift bag (100 UAH), a set of drying nets (100 UAH). This isn’t an upsell block, “you may also like” — it’s a standalone category with its own heading, its own “To catalogue” button, and a nav link in the header. Accessories at Tenze work as a separate market, not an add-on to brushes.

'Brush accessories' section — an organiser cup, a cleaning mat, a gift bag, a set of drying nets — Four cards with markdown pricing (720 → 570 UAH, struck through) — a typical post-sale pattern that stays on the site as a “permanent discount”. An add-to-cart button right on the card, with no need to go to the product page, lets repeat customers add to cart straight from the home page.

“Why Tenze” — 4 benefits with no icons, on a photo background

The trust section is built as a 4-cell grid with brush photos between the cells and four text blocks: “All brushes are assembled entirely by hand, which is how we preserve the exceptional softness of the bristles”, “All our collections are made with double-locked, deep-set bristles, so they don’t shed over time”, “The brush handles are made of natural wood with an additional coating that protects against paint chipping”, “All brushes are densely packed and blend textures beautifully”. Instead of standard beauty icons (“natural / hypoallergenic / handmade”), there are specific manufacturing details, in the language of someone who knows exactly how cheap brushes shed and how to prevent it.

The 'Why us' section — 4 benefits with brush photos between the cells — There’s no appeal to certificates or eco labels here — just four engineering statements about the construction. This is a distinctive trait of niche craft brands: trust is built through manufacturing detail, not badges.

The catalogue: WooCommerce + SmartWooFilters (swoof)

The /shop/ page is a standard WooCommerce archive with 12 products per page and pagination, plus a custom “Collection” dropdown above it via the SmartWooFilters plugin (URL path /shop/swoof/product_cat-akczijni/). Sorting uses the standard WC options (popularity / rating / latest / price asc-desc). The product card shows a large square hero photo on a grey or beige background, a title, a price (with the old struck-through price if discounted), and two actions: a “Details” link + a quick add-to-cart icon right on the card. Out-of-stock items are marked with a separate text badge rather than being hidden from the feed.

The /shop/ catalogue — a 4×N grid, a 'Collection' filter dropdown, standard WC sorting — SmartWooFilters replaces WooCommerce’s standard taxonomy archive with a swoof route (visible in the breadcrumb “Catalogue / Sale”). This gives clean URLs for filters and lets individual pages be cached more aggressively than default WC GET-parameter URLs.

The product card — one column of text + a 3-tab panel

The brush page is built as two columns: on the left, a large square product photo on a grey background (the same format across the whole brand), on the right, a title with the price on one line (no clutter of ratings and social buttons), and a full description with a numbered list of what each brush in the set does (Foundation / Blush / Contour / Highlighting / Big Blending / Small Eyeshadow brush). Below the two columns is a horizontal tab panel, “Feature / Delivery / Payment”, with three fixed blocks closing typical pre-purchase objections: manufacturing technology, Nova Poshta terms, and payment methods (card, Apple Pay, Google Pay, or cash at the branch).

A product card, 'Emerald Collection Special Set of 6 brushes' — photo + a description with a numbered list of features — The description “1. Foundation brush — for blending cream textures … 7. Small Eyeshadow brush — for working on the lower lid” isn’t marketing, it’s an instruction manual. The customer gets both the set and a table of which brush does what. It reduces post-purchase support: fewer questions like “which brush should I use to apply…”.

The 'Feature' tab of the product card + a 'You may also like' block with a slick carousel — The tab panel closes typical pre-purchase objections right on the product page, with no need to navigate to /faq or /payment. Below it is a slick carousel of related products within the same collection (the Emerald Collection Big Blending Brush, Face Shaping Brush, Powder Brush, the Basic+ set).

The “Cart” is straight-up a checkout with Nova Poshta built in

There’s no standard /cart/ page with the templated WooCommerce table at Tenze: the /cart/ URL redirects straight to /checkout/?cart=true, where two columns run side by side — the order form on the left and a compact mini-cart with a qty stepper and a delete cross on the right. The promo-code field is placed first, above “Buyer details”. The Nova Poshta selector is built right into the form: a dropdown for “to a branch / to a parcel locker”, then a “Choose a city” autocomplete, then “Choose a branch” — with no need to jump to a third-party address registry. Payment offers two radio options: “Payment on delivery” (default) and “Payment by card, Apple Pay, Google Pay”. No step-by-step accordions, no mandatory guest login — one form, one “Place order” button.

Tenze checkout: buyer details, a Nova Poshta city and branch selector, 2 payment methods, a promo code and a mini-cart on the right — There’s no separate cart page at all — adding an item takes the user straight to the checkout, with the full list of items shown on the right. This is a familiar pattern for niche UA shops: fewer clicks to payment, at the cost of losing the option to “save the cart and come back tomorrow” (though the WooCommerce session still holds the cart contents for 7 days).

Instagram as a second trust channel

The second-to-last section is a large block, “Follow our updates on Instagram”, with a “Subscribe” button and four square previews of posts from the @tenze_brushes account: product packaging, customer photos, brushes in use. This isn’t an embedded Instagram-API feed (which often breaks due to rate limits), but a manually curated selection of post images — fast, predictable, and independent of Meta tokens.

Info pages instead of a “My orders” dashboard

In the footer are four static pages instead of a separate my-account section: “Payment and delivery”, “Exchange and returns”, “Public offer agreement”, “Privacy policy”. This is the classic UA retail architecture of “place an order → get an SMS with the waybill → track it in the Nova Poshta app”, with no account dashboard and order history. The “Payment and delivery” page spells out the small rules a manager would otherwise repeat over messenger: shipping runs Monday to Saturday (Sunday is skipped), delivery costs roughly 80 UAH from the carrier, packaging is checked and any damage recorded at the branch via a Nova Poshta claim, payment is by card / Apple Pay / Google Pay on the site or cash at the branch with a 20 UAH + 2% commission, and cash on delivery only comes with a 200 UAH prepayment to the sole trader’s account via Privat or Mono. “Exchange and returns” references Cabinet of Ministers Resolution No. 172 (hygiene items aren’t returnable) — a short legal boundary with no unnecessary wording. For urgent and international shipments there’s a separate channel via Instagram Direct, which technically limits scope, but closes the edge case without extra integrations.

Tenze /oplata-i-dostavka/: Nova Poshta terms, packaging checks, payment by card or cash at the branch with a 20 UAH + 2% commission — The page is plain text with no icons, accordions or tables — a typical solution for a niche e-commerce shop with manager-led support: the rules are placed here because it’s simpler to write them once than to explain them to every customer over Direct. There’s no separate contacts page — the phone number and Kyiv address are always in the footer, along with links to these four info pages.

Stack, integrations, marketing

WordPress + WooCommerce on a custom tenzewp theme — a catalogue of 30+ SKUs (individual brushes + 4 ready-made sets + accessories), 5 product categories, sorting and pagination out of the box.
SmartWooFilters (swoof) — custom category URL filters (/shop/swoof/product_cat-akczijni/) and a “Collection” dropdown filter in the catalogue grid.
Slick slider — a related-products carousel on the product page and an upsell strip on the home page (accessories).
PixelYourSite Free 9.6 — a prepared layer for Meta Pixel / GA4 / TikTok Pixel conversions (currently with no active pixel ID — infrastructure ready to launch targeting).
Nova Poshta — shipping instructions right in the product-card tabs, with no dedicated shipping plugin (orders go to a manager in the admin panel).
Yoast SEO — a sitemap with 6 sub-routes (post, page, product, category, product_cat, author), 9 static pages, the product sitemap updating automatically as items are added.
Card / Apple Pay / Google Pay / cash at the branch — 4 payment paths with no custom gateway development.

Summary

Tenze Brushes is an example of niche craft e-commerce on WooCommerce, where the key decision isn’t design but a mechanic — “build your own set at a fixed price” — pushed to the site’s main CTA. Instead of packaging brushes into fixed SKU sets, the brand sells a quantity of items and lets the customer decide the composition themselves, while holding a −20% discount on the mix-and-match. The rest — three collections, a separate accessories section, four engineering-minded claims about build quality, a manually curated Instagram block, a standard checkout with Nova Poshta and Apple Pay. The site has run for its second year with no rebuild, holds a catalogue of over 30 items, and serves national and limited international distribution with no headless overlay.