What it is? If it’s right for you? And how it can help your business?
Kitting fulfillment is an integral part of full-service e-commerce fulfillment companies. While people who work in the industry know all about kitting, few outsiders understand the scope of projects kitting encompasses, nor how often they encounter kitted products on a daily basis.
Defining Kitting
Kitting is the combining of various products into various types of bundles. The kits may consist of the components for items requiring assembly by the buyer:
- Flat pack furniture such as bookshelves, tables and chairs
- Toys
- Stereo and computer components
Kitting is also the creation of “kits” of materials for use by retailers to store and display goods or for direct shipment to consumers.
Examples of items that went through a kitting service include:
- Multi-packs, such as bundles of bars of soap and clothing 2-packs
- Club packs, such as packages containing larger amounts of groceries, such as rice, bread, snacks, and paper products
- Promotion kits, such as larger toiletry containers with a travel size of a complementary product attached “for free”
Determining if Kitting is a Good Fit
To figure out if kitting services will benefit your business, first, take time to understand the process.
Kitting companies procure the products, including the central item and any bonus pieces, or the content for a specific basket of items. They then come up with the proper packaging, and obtain the materials required, from cardboard to plastic wrap, including things such as store aisle end caps and other retail display pieces.
Any business offering combination packs, or selling ready to assemble items must maintain high standards and quality control measures to ensure all components of a kit appear in every order. An effective kitting set-up requires:
- Space for both inventory storage and assembly
- A trained staff who can easily switch from kitting one product line to another
- Access to packaging suppliers
- Access to various forms of transportation
Many in-house kitting services result in only fair to middling success. Others realize from the outset that kitting that is best outsourced. It costs money to set up a kitting assembly department, and nothing guarantees that the quality of in-house kitting processing will be satisfactory.
How Kitting Helps Businesses Like Yours
Obtaining everything required for kitting leads to the need for warehouse space. Quality warehouse distribution services must, beyond providing kitting and assembly services, provide secure, safe and clean storage of all the components. Beyond that, they must employ state of the art inventory tracking and efficient floor mapping so that every part is retrievable as needed.
Your business exists to make money, through profits and minimal expenses. However, this is one situation where DIY will not save money. The various parts of a good kitting service are too expensive for most business to undertake on their own. Outsourcing is an expense, but one that saves you money in the end.
Using a kitting and fulfillment service saves you:
- The cost and complication of leasing or buying warehouse space, and then maintaining it
- The expense of purchasing warehouse management systems to manage stock, order status and item locations
- The hassle of hiring workers to handle fluctuating volumes of orders, not to mention training them
- Money and space because inventory is purchased only as needed
- Your sanity because kits can be done to customers’ specifications, resulting in fewer returns
Why choose a good Kitting Fulfillment Company
In the realm of e-commerce, fulfillment services must include high quality kitting and assembly. Ask anyone whose business tried to handle large scale kitting in-house.
Leaving kitting to specialists means money saved and time preserved for other business activities.