Selling products together
A coffee brand sells bags of coffee and mugs individually. For the holidays, it offers a gift set containing two bags and one mug. Customers see one gift with one price. The warehouse needs to know which three items to put in the parcel.
Giving the set its own product record lets the sales team describe and price it. Connecting that record to its contents lets the warehouse fulfill it and the buyer plan enough stock.
Define the contents of one set
A bundle groups products under a single selling SKU. Its components identify the products and quantities needed for one bundle. The coffee gift set requires two bags of a particular coffee and one particular mug.
An order for three sets therefore needs six bags and three mugs. Defining those quantities once gives everyone the same answer. The packer does not have to interpret a marketing description, and the buyer does not have to reconstruct the recipe from previous orders.
Keep the individual products recognizable. The coffee in the set is the same coffee sold separately, so both forms of demand need to be considered when buying more.
Decide when the set will be assembled
The warehouse can pick the components as each order arrives, or assemble sets in advance. A virtual bundle is fulfilled from its components at the time of the order. A kit commonly describes a set already assembled and stocked as a finished unit.
Picking on demand leaves the coffee and mugs available for individual sales until they are committed. Assembling early saves packing time during the holiday rush, but the goods inside those kits are no longer loose stock available for other work.
Record the stock change when sets are assembled. Otherwise the operation may count both the finished gifts and the coffee and mugs used to make them.
Check what limits the quantity
Available to Make describes how many complete sets the available components can support. Ten bags of coffee and eight mugs can make five gifts. Buying more mugs will not increase that number; the coffee is the limiting component.
The five possible gifts still need to be packed. If the same coffee is used in another gift set, both offers depend on the same ten bags. Their possible quantities cannot be added together as though each had its own supply.
Before offering a hundred sets for a promotion, check the components, gift packaging, and time available to prepare them. The answer may be to reserve coffee for the promotion or assemble a known quantity beforehand.
Keep other selling names connected
A retailer may use its own item number for the gift. A reference mapping lets the team recognize that number as the existing set. If a separate selling identity is needed, an alias can represent the underlying product or combination under another SKU.
In either case, make the relationship to the physical goods explicit. When the retailer orders twenty gifts, the warehouse should be able to determine the contents, and the buyer should be able to include forty bags and twenty mugs in the demand for those products.