Bundles

The wrong way to price a bundle is a flat percentage off. A 10 percent bundle discount trains buyers to wait for the discount and eats your margin on the units that would have sold anyway. The right way is to price the bundle at the sum of the units minus the fixed costs you actually save by shipping them together.

The formula

Bundle price = sum of unit RRPs minus (packaging saved plus postage saved plus card fee saved). On two candles in the same box: packaging saved is roughly $1.02 (one mailer, one tissue, one label). Postage saved is roughly $2.79 on a UK small parcel because a two-candle box still fits in the small-parcel band. Card fee saved is roughly $0.38 because the fixed component is charged once. Total saving passed on: about $4.19. If your RRP is around $56.22, two candles become a bundle priced just below twice RRP, not a blind 10 percent off. The saving is tied to real fixed costs you avoided.

That $1.91 looks like a rounding error. It is not. On a hundred bundles a month it is $191 of margin the flat-discount approach would have given away.

Anchoring the saving so it feels generous

Display the bundle as sum of units struck through, bundle price beside it, then the saved amount in a small line underneath: Save $4.19. The number is honest, the maths is transparent, and the shopper sees a saving without you having to invent a promotional discount that comes out of your pocket.

A bundle is not a discount. A bundle is a rebate of the fixed costs the shopper let you skip.