How custom kitting builds loyalty for beauty and personal care brands

What is custom kitting in beauty and personal care?  

Custom kitting is the process of combining individual products into multi-product packs that are sold and shipped together, such as promotional bundles. It’s a highly specialised capability that requires attention to detail and efficient organisation. It’s therefore vital to have well-trained staff and a streamlined operational setup to ensure that the right products are included in multi-product bundles, and the customer experience is consistent. 

What are the benefits of product kitting? 

Encourage larger purchases 

Multi-item packs can encourage shoppers to buy more than if they had chosen products individually. Brands should therefore consider bundling items that are typically bought together, such as shaving foam and aftershave, exfoliants and moisturisers, and shampoo and conditioner. These pre-packaged bundles can also reduce logistics costs because each item doesn’t need to be picked and packed separately. One bundle including several items usually costs less to ship than several individual items.  

Build brand loyalty 

A well-assembled kit can help forge a connection with customers. This is especially true during seasonal sales peaks such as Black Friday, Christmas and Valentine’s Day, when health and beauty gift sets are popular purchases. These can often be the first point of contact that a customer has with a brand, so it’s important they make a great impression. Whether it’s wrapping items in tissue paper sprayed with perfume or securing the box with a bow, the details make the difference. In addition, beauty advent calendars are becoming increasingly popular, offering first-timers a fun and festive way to discover your brand at its best. 

To reward loyal customers, many brands offer free add-on items with orders. These can also encourage customers to try new products in your range. With the right preparation and training, a 3PL provider can help you accurately add free gifts to the right orders. Warehouse employees can also ensure that the gifts make sense with the orders. For example, a customer would be confused if their free gift was a smaller version of the item they had bought. Sharp-eyed packers make sure this doesn’t happen.  

Enable subscription models 

Beauty and personal care brands offering subscription models can meet consumer demand for a more personalised shopping experience. This involves sending customers regular replacement products or refills for a monthly or annual fee. The aim is to ensure that consumers never run out of essential items, while also building customer loyalty. Kitting allows 3PLs to prepare packages in advance for subscription customers, making fulfilment more efficient for standard subscriptions. This ensures that customers can rely on their favourite daily beauty products without having to worry about going to the shops.  

However, subscription services are more complex if the contents change monthly or quarterly, such as customisable multi-product subscription boxes. Since customers can change the items they want to receive in their box, consolidation and shipping can be more complicated. This requires effective inventory management accuracy and precision in picking. Custom kitting allows products to be assembled on a ‘build-to-order’ basis, so that even these customisable subscription boxes can be fulfilled accurately every time. 

Partnering with a 3PL to deliver custom kitting excellence 

Successfully implementing custom kitting requires close cooperation and transparent communication between brands and their 3PL partners. Warehouse staff need to know in real time what is in stock and where items are located, so they can pick, assemble and pack product kits as soon as the orders come in. Sharing data in real time eliminates confusion and ensures that customers always receive the right items. In addition, since many brands require significantly more custom kitting services during seasonal or promotional periods, custom kitting offerings should be flexible and scalable. It’s therefore important that 3PLs have the resources to scale up custom kitting as required.

The future of custom kitting 

Personalisation is becoming a bigger part of the beauty and personal care industry and, in many areas, a ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach is no longer applicable. For example, more and more niche brands are emerging that target a variety of different audiences. Combined with the growth of personalised subscription models, it’s likely that bespoke kitting will continue to play a major role in building customer loyalty.