Your business is moving fast. That’s our tagline here at Wherefour, and there’s nothing worse than being slowed down by multiple points of data entry to manage your sales. That’s why we’re committed to helping businesses grow, take on new challenges and share their stories.

What is kitting? Sometimes also called bundling, it’s the process of combining two or more SKUs (finished goods) to sell together.

Commerce goes through patterns of bundling and unbundling — there’s no better example than cable television, where brands like Netflix encouraged cable-cutting at the outset and buying a single subscription service, and yet we find ourselves looping back to the era of buying cable packages, except this time, we’re bundling those streaming services. Understanding where the market is at, what your consumer needs and being ahead of the curve to provide it will always give you the upper hand when it comes to sales.

That said, there are advantages to kitting your products and below, we’ll share some of our top reasons to bundle, kit, tie together or otherwise consolidate multiple items into a set.

Kits are not only a product to sell, but a story to tell — creating curated bundles with your most popular products, your underrated products or perhaps even two products that should go well together but nobody knows about? You can encourage customer awareness about your full product offering by bundling those products together.

It’s like finding the perfect wine and cheese pairing for a summer night, or picking the perfect book off a library shelf. When a kit is put together properly, everyone gets a win.

For example, beauty product companies might choose to bundle together a shampoo and a conditioner — an intuitive pairing, but they may also choose to include a toner product as well, or something from their skincare line. By lowering the barrier to the skincare line, customers may discover other products that expand their personal care regimens as well.

A classic example for food companies is variety packs. This is a great entry point for new customers, a way to introduce them to all of your different products and let them choose for themselves which ones are their favourites. One way to lead storytelling here is to kit together a broader variety of items. For instance, a cheese company might partner with a winery or brewery to introduce new scenarios in which their cheese can be enjoyed.

Kits are an opportunity for you and your business to tell the world who you are as a business, set trends ahead of time and guide people towards choices that they’ll get the most fulfillment from. In the right hands, it’s a powerful tool for your brand.

Kitting products together also allows you to try out different models and understand why some of your products under or over-perform. By pairing products together in different configurations, you can gain a better understanding of what people are looking for — is it just that they really like your top performer? Or are they looking for your whole experience, and willing to try something new, but perhaps overwhelmed by the individual choices available?

Mixing it up and trying different arrangements will allow you to better understand what drives your customers to your product.

On a more practical level, kitting drives average order values up. It may seem obvious that a customer who is buying more is going to spend more, but kitting allows you to fold it into one product, reducing the number of clicks or decisions they have to make before they make a purchase. In a world where the consumer has so much choice, ensuring that your customer gets to the checkout with a kit in hand can make the revenue difference between success and failure for a particular product line.

Finally, kitting allows you to try new business channels. What works on an e-commerce, direct-to-consumer store will be different from what works on a big box shelf, and the retail market is as innovative as ever. Kitting allows you to have flexibility when targeting your audiences, understanding their needs and in reflection, grow your business to where the market is.

It may seem intuitive, but the fact that commerce goes through these patterns of change mean that keeping up with the lay of the land is more challenging than ever. Enticing your customer to buy a bundle as opposed to an individual item can be a great advantage, but the greater advantage is knowing where to shift the direction next.

Interested in understanding how kitting and bundling can help your business tell your story? Wherefour has a feature to help automate the kitting process during manufacturing. Get in touch with us at support@wherefour.com to learn how you can kit up.