Kitting means the process of taking individual items off the warehouse shelves and assembling multiple items into ready-to-ship packages, boxes or kits. Assembly (in terms of fulfillment service) means typically “light assembly”, which is combining different parts of products or packages, no professional tools or skills required.
Unlike simple pick & pack, kitting and assembly processes are a little tricky in fulfillment services. It involves all aspects of order fulfillment and requires the cooperation of multiple departments and personnel to ensure its efficiency and accuracy.
Make items unique
Combining different products in a particular way can distinguish your products from your competitors. More than that, sometimes it’s necessary to manufacture different parts of your products in various factories, to prevent your ideas from being stolen.
It’s an excellent way to unload dead inventory by selling the unsalable products together with the best-selling products. For some products with low purchase frequency, such as accessories, selling them in kits can improve the overall sales volume.
Add free samples in the packages so that consumers will try more of your products, which will effectively increase the probability of their re-purchase. This trick is especially suitable for skincare products, pet food, toys, snacks, and other areas where people always like to try new things.
Brushette® is a brand that has been manufacturing, marketing, and distributing electric toothbrushes and replacement brush heads since 2013. Mihran, the founder of @Brushette, also a concerned parent about their kids’ oral hygiene, came up with the idea of allowing users to keep the neck and remove the bristles only when he saw his 4-year-old son pulled the bristles off the toothbrush’s neck. This idea ultimately led to a very successful brand and brought a team of passionate people together.
By manufacturing its products in China, Brushette delights global consumers with inexpensive, high-quality electric toothbrushes and oral hygiene essential kits. But as the business continues to expand, the in-house fulfillment team starts to struggle to manage all the SKUs, and sometimes packing goes wrong.
To meet the needs of different consumers, Brushette develops more than ten kinds of brush heads, several series of electric toothbrushes, all types of toothbrush accessories. Brushette also provides regularly changing hygiene packs to add more fun to people’s daily brushing routines. It’s normal to have more than 50 items per order, and all the hygiene packs need custom packaging in different sizes to enhance consumer brand awareness and reduce shipping costs at the same time. None of these can be pulled off by an in-house fulfillment team.