Product Kitting Services
Kitting is an additional process of the ecommerce fulfilment strategy. When done correctly, it can save you time and money, and get orders shipped to customers quicker.
But if you’re fulfilling orders yourself or partnering with a 3PL that doesn’t provide kitting services, the kitting process can be overwhelming — especially if you’re dealing with a high volume of orders.
That’s where ShipBob comes in.
ShipBob is a best-in-class 3PL with a a full-suite of fulfilment services, including kitting.
Read on to learn about ShipBob’s kitting services.
We roll out new products and designs on our website 1-3 times a month and send new inventory to ShipBob each week. It’s really easy to create new SKUs and restock existing ones using ShipBob’s technology, which is especially important with high inventory turnover.
Carl Protsch,
Co-Founder of FLEO
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What is product kitting?
Kitting is the assembly of separate pieces into a single offering and is most often pre-built in batches. The point of creating kits is to have a ready-to-ship set for once a customer placed an order to expedite the retail fulfilment process.
Unlike a regular order, where you can’t predict what all a customer will order before they complete a purchase, kitting is used when a certain combination is known ahead of time.
It’s important to note that it doesn’t always make sense to kit items. Consulting with a 3PL will help you understand if kitting make sense for your business. You may find that your manufacturer can perform kitting in a more cost-effective manner than a 3PL.
How ShipBob handles product kitting
ShipBob offers kitting services at an additional cost.
Kitting with ShipBob makes it easy to accommodate your business’s unique needs for how items are being shipped to your customers. Common examples include:
- Multiple component pieces arrive separately to ShipBob and need to be assembled or put together.
- You would like us to prepare the inventory in a particular way for your customers.
- You would like us to break down inventory from a case into single units (or vice versa).
ShipBob works with each customer to ensure their items are assembled exactly as they request before orders are shipped to customers.
This aims to reduce shipping costs and prepare orders in a more scalable way. ShipBob’s software also makes it easy to bundle products and manage SKUs.
Click here to learn more about our kitting process.
How ShipBob works
Once you sync your online store to our technology, we help get you up and running quickly. As soon as we receive you inventory, the orders are automatically sent to the closest fulfilment centre to the order’s destination to be picked, packed and shipped.
From the ShipBob dashboard, you can track inventory in real time, view order fulfillment and shipping insights, forecast demand, and much more.
Get a glimpse inside one of our fulfilment centres:
Distributed inventory
With ShipBob’s network of fulfilment centres, you can strategically split your inventory across our locations to get your products from point A to point B more quickly and affordably. Storing inventory near your customers helps reduce the shipping zones and costs associated with shipping orders to faraway destinations.
Distributed inventory also helps you stay competitive by offering fast shipping to your customers. When an order is placed, ShipBob’s algorithm automatically selects the warehouse and carrier that will give you the quickest turnaround at the best price. This strategy has helped our merchants bring 13% savings to their bottom line.
100% Coverage Across the Continental US
If you’re looking to expand into the United States, ShipBob has 2-Day Express Shipping that provides 100% coverage in the continental US from even just one fulfilment centre.
You can also distribute your inventory across ShipBob’s fulfilment centres across all regions of the United States. We leave it up to you to decide where you want us to store your inventory.
Order management
At ShipBob, we track your orders from A to Z. Filter orders by status, search for specific orders, see a quick timeline view of where your order is in the fulfilment process (e.g. when an order is picked, packed, or shipped), easily find shipping-related information (e.g., weights, dimensions, or carrier service), and get a quick snapshot of any orders that require action.
With order management software for your direct-to-consumer and wholesale shipments, you can manage subscriptions, make changes to your orders post-purchase, map your store’s shipping options to ShipBob, and automatically share tracking information with your customers.
Inventory management
At ShipBob, we empower merchants to manage their inventory with the right tools and guidance. It’s easy to view the status of inventory and quantity on hand across locations at any point in time, identify slow-moving inventory with high storage costs, and gain insights into the performance of units sold over time by channel.
Our inventory management software helps you set reminders to proactively replenish inventory with reorder notifications, bundle your products for promotions, make inventory transfer requests, and much more.
Reporting and analytics
To provide you with visibility into our operations and performance, and also hold ourselves accountable, ShipBob’s free analytics tool is packed with charts to help you with everything from year-end reporting, to better supply chain decision-making.
Data can be a competitive advantage, and our reports show an analysis of which fulfilment centres you should stock, days of inventory left before you run out, impact of promotions on stock levels, each shipping method’s average cart value, shipping cost, and days in transit, your fulfilment cost per order, storage cost per unit, and much more.
End-to-end customer experience
We care about the customer experience as much as you and strive to be an extension of your team. From custom branded boxes to free plain packaging, ShipBob works with you to provide the unboxing experience you want. We also help you offer the fastest, most cost-effective shipping options to meet your customers’ expectations.
As soon as an order ships, tracking is pushed back to your store. We also offer return management services, allowing customers to generate return shipping labels and track returns, while getting your products processed and back into your available inventory as efficiently as possible.
How ShipBob improves your fulfilment and logistics
Save on fulfilment costs
Coffee creamer brand Prymal joined ShipBob in 2019 and was quickly able to save $8,000 per month on fulfilment costs, while at the same time achieving 4x growth.
Improve your conversion rate
After switching to ShipBob, RIFRUF was able to offer 2-day shipping, which helped increased their conversions.
Store, ship, and grow internationally
Sunglasses brand Ombraz distributed their inventory across 3 fulfilment centres in two different countries. This has allowed them to ship to 55 countries on seven continents.
