Gothrider Coffee Brews Up Simplified Shipping and Inventory Operations with Simple Bundles

Summary of Gothrider’s results

• Faster Shipping: Simple Bundles streamlined Gothrider’s shipping process, enabling quicker order dispatch by providing clear bundle contents.
• Reduced Errors: The app significantly lowered fulfillment mistakes, resulting in fewer customer support tickets and a smoother overall operation.
• Improved Margins: By cutting down on fulfillment errors, especially with low-cost items, Phil saved on reshipping costs, enhancing Gothrider's profitability.

The journey to founding Gothrider Coffee was anything but ordinary for Phil Kyprianou, founder of the edgy coffee brand. 

Phil began his career in the events industry, focusing on digital marketing for a major competitor of LiveNation. During this time, he dabbled in dropshipping as a side project and discovered a passion for ecommerce, but he wanted to create a distinct brand rather than just an online store. 

After running a survey to gauge interest in potential products, he identified coffee as a promising area, noting that most coffee brands lacked uniqueness.

With a good relationship already established with a coffee company, he collaborated with them to create a coffee recipe, leading to the launch of Gothrider Coffee, which has quickly become known for its edgy, rebellious aesthetic.

Since Gothrider is quickly carving out its niche in a competitive market, Phil recognized the potential to further enhance the brand's value and customer experience through product bundling. 

But as any Shopify store owner knows, product bundles create a slew of back-end issues that slow down your operational efficiency. 

This is especially true in Phil’s case, since he expanded Gothrider into 200+ retail stores and plans to add even more.

Naturally, scaling up a business brings new challenges, but that shouldn't deter brand owners from providing meaningful experiences like curated product bundles.

Determined to streamline operations, Phil set out to find a solution. Here’s the story about how Simple Bundles became the perfect fix, improving Gothrider Coffee’s profit margins in various ways.

Why bundles just made sense for Gothrider Coffee

With customer acquisition costs sky-high, Gothrider faced a challenge many ecommerce businesses do: making the first sale profitable.

Not to mention, the economics of selling coffee — whether as a one-off purchase or on subscription — were tough. 

"At our price of goods, the cost to acquire a customer could be just as expensive, if not more," explained Phil. This was compounded by the fact that coffee is a taste-driven product, which means customers need to experience it firsthand to know if it's right for them. That makes it a hard sell from the get-go.

Bundles became the perfect solution by offering a way to increase average order value while minimizing losses on new customer acquisitions. 

However, Gothrider's bundles were far from simple: "Our bundles included T-shirts with six different sizes, choices of coffee roast, and even the type of product like ground coffee or K-cups, which added a higher level of complexity that exceeded Shopify's out-of-the-box capabilities.”

The challenge: Product bundles on Shopify are a logistical nightmare 

When Phil first tried to set up his product bundles, he quickly realized that managing them was a manual and cumbersome process. The challenges he faced were three-fold:

1. Shopify's Variant Limitation: The platform's restrictions made it impossible for his team to offer the level of customization needed for their coffee bundles.
2. Inventory Tracking: The bundles didn't break down into individual components, making it difficult to manage the inventory of each item within a bundle.
3. Fulfillment Integration: Conventional fulfillment systems struggled with the specific demands of bundled products. Fulfillment centers could only see the parent product bundle when processing an order, forcing Phil's team to list individual products in each bundled order manually.

To explain this in more detail… When orders for bundles are processed, fulfillment platforms typically generate a pick list—a rundown of items that need to be prepared and packed. However, these systems falter when confronted with the complexity of bundles. 

"Many systems don’t read metadata the way some apps do, which means they can’t break down the individual components of a bundle into separate line items," said Phil. 

This lack of detailed breakdown results in fulfillment lists that merely hint at the existence of a bundle without specifying its contents, such as the specific variant of coffee or the size of a T-shirt included.

“We had to manage everything manually, which meant creating each bundle as a separate product without any detailed breakdown. Fulfillment was difficult because we had to print detailed sheets for each bundle, which led to issues with inventory management and fulfillment quality. There were sometimes missing items or incorrect quantities,” he explained.

Without clear, itemized instructions, warehouse staff find themselves on a treasure hunt for each component of a bundle. And since scanners can't recognize the individual items within a bundle, they can't alert workers if an item is missing. 

In other words, not only is this workflow completely inefficient and time-consuming, it's also prone to errors.

Tired of the mistakes and flow of support tickets related to missing or incorrect items, Phil decided it was time to find a solution that provides clear visibility and accuracy in the fulfillment process.

“The limitations of Shopify's variant system made it impossible to use an out-of-the-box solution for our needs. The fact that Simple Bundles breaks down the products independently has been a game changer on the inventory side.”

Simple Bundles became a non-negotiable with its ability to break down bundles into line items

"When we found Simple Bundles, it solved all of our issues in one shot," Phil said. "We created our first test bundle and saw that it really works exactly the way we want."

This meant Gothrider Coffee was able to not only simplify the backend process but also offer a variety of complex bundles that appealed to their customers' diverse tastes and preferences, all while managing inventory and fulfillment efficiently. 

How? 

• Deconstructing Bundles: Simple Bundles allows for the breakdown of bundles into individual line items, enabling precise inventory management and reducing the risks of overselling, shipping errors, and returns.
• Customization Flexibility: The platform provides the ability to customize bundles without the constraints of Shopify's native limitations, allowing brands like Gothrider Coffee to creatively market and sell their products.
• Seamless Integration: Simple Bundles integrates smoothly into a brand's existing infrastructure, including subscription services, third-party logistics (3PLs), returns, and accounting software.

This solution allowed Gothrider to enhance their customer's shopping experience, improve order accuracy, and ultimately, turn a challenging economic situation into a strategic advantage.

Gothrider’s results

After integrating Simple Bundle into his operations, Phil noticed the results were nothing short of transformative. Here’s a breakdown of the improvements he experienced:

• Faster Shipping: Simple Bundles significantly sped up Gothrider’s shipping times. Knowing exactly what each bundle needed and where every item was located allowed them to get orders out the door quicker than ever before.
• Dramatic Reduction in Errors: The integration of Simple Bundle drastically cut down on fulfillment mistakes. This was reflected in the notable decrease in customer support tickets related to shipping issues. Fewer mistakes meant happier customers and a smoother operation all around—while easing the load on Gothrider’s support team.
• Improved Margins: Addressing and correcting fulfillment errors, especially with low-cost items like stickers, previously ate into Gothrider’s margins. By minimizing these errors, Phil is able to save on unnecessary reshipping costs, directly benefiting his bottom line.

“I see a noticeable decrease in the number of tickets, especially those related to missing products or mismatches. There was a time when these issues were more common, but now, we're seeing significantly fewer tickets about these problems,” explained Phil. "We're seeing fewer margins being eroded because we no longer have to incur the extra cost of shipping products back. This has helped us save on expenses and protect our margins."

A simple solution with big results

For brands navigating the complexities of product bundles, Phil’s advice is clear: consider Simple Bundles. 

Simple Bundles bypasses Shopify’s variant limits, integrates with Shopify POS, and plays nicely with ERP and 3PL systems by splitting bundles into individual SKUs to track inventory with real-time stock sync.

Try it for free and create up to three bundles, with access to all bundle types, on the Shopify App Store here.

“The simplicity is key. Simple Bundles is straightforward and does exactly what it's supposed to do. I believe that's where many others falter; they overcomplicate things or add too many unnecessary features. That's what app builders should aim for—focusing on being that best at one thing rather than trying to offer everything.”