Most eCommerce businesses focus on getting individual products out the door as fast as possible. That makes sense when you’re starting out or when your catalog is small. But there’s a fulfillment strategy that many businesses overlook, even though it can increase average order value, simplify inventory management, and create better customer experiences. It’s called kitting and bundling, and if you’re not using it yet, you’re probably leaving money on the table.
The difference between selling individual items and offering pre-packaged bundles might seem minor. But it changes how you manage inventory, how customers shop, and how much they spend per order. More businesses are discovering that bundling fulfillment services can handle the logistics while they focus on which products to pair together.
What Kitting and Bundling Actually Mean?
Kitting is when you take separate items and package them together as a single SKU before they’re ordered. Think of a “new customer welcome box” that always contains the same three products, already assembled and sitting in your warehouse as one unit. When someone orders it, your fulfillment team ships one item, not three.
Kitting and Bundling can occur at different stages. Sometimes it involves creating a product bundle listing on your site where items ship together but are picked separately at fulfillment. Other times it works like kitting, where the bundle is pre-assembled. The key is that customers see and purchase it as one combined offering.
Both approaches let you sell multiple products as a package. The main difference is timing and how your inventory system treats them.
Why This Is More Important Than You Think?
Selling bundles changes customer behavior in predictable ways. When someone sees a skincare set with cleanser, toner, and moisturizer priced at $65 instead of buying a $28 cleanser alone, they’re more likely to spend more per transaction. You’re making it easier for them to buy related products they probably need anyway.
From a business perspective, Kitting and Bundling helps move inventory that sits too long on shelves. Maybe your moisturizer sells well but your serum doesn’t. Pair them together at a slight discount and suddenly that serum inventory starts moving. You can also introduce customers to products they haven’t tried yet. Someone who only buys your best-selling item might discover they love another product when it comes in a bundle.
There’s also the operational side. Managing hundreds of individual SKUs gets complicated. When you create kits, you’re reducing the number of items your team has to pick, pack, and ship separately. One kit replaces three picking tasks. That means fewer errors, faster fulfillment, and lower labor costs per order.
Bundles also reduce your shipping costs in many cases. Sending three items together in one box costs less than shipping three separate orders. Even small savings per order add up when you’re doing volume.
Common Bundle Types That Work
The best bundles solve a specific problem or fit a clear use case. Here are formats that work across different types of eCommerce businesses.
1. Starter or Sample Kits
These introduce new customers to your product line without overwhelming them. A coffee company might bundle three different roasts in smaller bags. A supplement brand could offer a 30-day supply of their top three products. The goal is lowering the barrier to trying multiple items.
2. Replenishment Bundles
For consumable products, bundles that cover a month or quarter of use make reordering simple. Customers don’t have to think about when to buy again. They just subscribe to the bundle or reorder the same kit when they run low.
3. Gift Sets
These perform well during holidays and special occasions. The packaging often looks different from your regular products, and the price point is set for gifting. A skincare brand might create a “spa day at home” bundle with bath salts, a face mask, and a candle.
Themed Collections
These group products around an activity or outcome. A fitness brand could bundle resistance bands, a yoga mat, and a workout guide. A cooking store might package a pasta-making kit with specialty flour, a rolling pin, and recipe cards.
4. Upsell Bundles
When someone adds a product to their cart, suggesting a bundle that includes that item plus complementary products can increase order value. If they’re buying a camera, showing a bundle with a memory card, cleaning kit, and camera bag makes sense.
The Logistics Challenge Most Businesses Hit
Creating bundles on your website is easy. Managing the fulfillment side is where it gets tricky, especially as you scale.
If you’re pre-assembling kits yourself, you need space and labor. Someone has to pull individual items, package them together, create new labels, and store them as separate inventory. When you’re doing 50 kits a month, this is manageable. At 500 or 5,000 kits monthly, it takes serious time and space.
Kitting and Bundling also introduce inventory tracking challenges. If your cleanser is in three different bundles plus sold individually, you need systems that account for all of that. Running out of one component can stop production on multiple bundle SKUs. Your inventory management system needs to track both individual items and assembled kits accurately, or you’ll end up overselling.
Then there’s the quality control aspect. Bundles need to look good because they’re often positioned as premium offerings or gifts. If items are just tossed in a box with no organization, it doesn’t create the experience customers expect. Proper kitting requires attention to presentation, which takes time.
This is where bundling fulfillment services become valuable. Instead of handling assembly in-house, you can work with a 3PL that specializes in kitting. They receive your individual products, assemble them according to your specifications, manage the inventory, and ship them when orders come in.
What to Look for in Bundling Fulfillment?
Not every fulfillment center offers kitting services, and the ones that do vary in capability. Here’s what matters if you’re considering outsourcing this.
The provider should have experience with assembly and packaging beyond just putting items in a box. Can they add branded tissue paper, arrange products in a specific way, or include printed inserts? The details matter for customer experience.
A Kitting and Bundling strategy requires an inventory system that handles component-level tracking. If your bundle contains items that also sell individually, they should be able to allocate inventory correctly across all SKUs. You don’t want to find out a bundle is “in stock” on your site when one component is actually gone.
Flexibility is important too. Your bundle offerings will probably change. Seasonal kits, limited editions, and testing new combinations should be easy to set up without long lead times or complicated processes.
Cost structure should be transparent. Some 3PLs charge per kit assembled, others include basic kitting in their pick and pack fees but charge extra for complex assembly. Know what you’re paying and whether the math works for your margins.
Location matters if you care about shipping speed. Using a fulfillment center closer to your customer base reduces transit times and shipping costs, which is especially important for bundles since they’re often heavier than single items.
Getting Started Without Overcomplicating It
You don’t need to overhaul your entire catalog to start benefiting from bundles. Begin with one or two kits that make obvious sense for your products and customers.
Look at your sales data. Which products do customers frequently buy together? Those are natural bundle candidates. Also check which items have high margins but low sales volume. Pairing them with popular products can help move that inventory while maintaining profitability.
Test your bundles the same way you’d test any new product. Create a small quantity, see how they sell, and gather customer feedback. You might find that your “ultimate bundle” with five items doesn’t sell as well as a simpler three-item version.
With Kitting and Bundling, it’s important to pay attention to your pricing strategy. Bundles should offer customers some value compared to buying items separately, but they don’t need to be heavily discounted. A 10-15% savings is often enough incentive while still protecting your margins. Sometimes the convenience factor alone justifies the purchase, even at minimal discount.
If you’re doing assembly in-house initially, document your process. Take photos of how items should be arranged, list everything that goes in each bundle, and note any special packaging steps. This documentation becomes essential when you’re ready to hand the process off to a fulfillment partner.
The Bottom Line
Kitting and bundling aren’t just nice-to-have strategies for eCommerce businesses anymore. They’re practical ways to increase revenue, improve inventory turnover, and give customers more of what they want. The businesses that do this well aren’t necessarily bigger or better funded. They just recognized an opportunity to package their products differently and found the right fulfillment support to make it scalable.
Whether you start small with one seasonal gift set or build an entire line of curated bundles, the operational side of kitting and bundling doesn’t have to be a bottleneck.. Bundling fulfillment providers exist specifically to handle the assembly, inventory management, and shipping logistics so you can focus on creating combinations that your customers actually want to buy.
The question isn’t whether bundles could work for your business. It’s whether you’re ready to test them and see what happens when you give customers an easier way to buy more.
