Kitting 101: What It Is, What It Costs, and When Your Campaign Needs It

A backer pledges for the deluxe tier. That means one hardcover, one signed bookplate, two enamel pins, a sticker sheet and a print, all in one box, all arriving in the same condition they left the shelf. Somebody has to pull those six things from six different places and turn them into one package. That job is kitting, and it's the part of fulfillment creators most often forget to budget for.

We've fulfilled 150+ campaigns and shipped 350,000+ products as a Kickstarter Expert Partner, and we run our own campaigns too, so we've been on both sides of the kitting table. Here's what it is, what it costs, and how to keep it from eating your margin.

What kitting actually means

Kitting is assembling separate items into one ready-to-ship unit. In a warehouse that mostly looks like one of three things:

• Tier kitting. Each pledge level is a different combination of items. The packer builds the combination per order.
• Pre-kitting. If 300 backers all picked the same bundle, we build 300 identical kits ahead of time, then ship them like a single product. Faster and cheaper per unit.
• Assembly. Anything that needs hands before it can go in a box: sliding a book into a slipcase, bagging and boarding a comic, folding a box set, inserting a bookplate, bundling a card deck.

Pick and pack is pulling what's on the order. Kitting is what happens when the order is more than "one of this." It's the whole job of our kitting and assembly team.

When you need it (and when you don't)

You probably don't need kitting if every order is one to three items straight off the shelf. Our standard pick-and-pack fee for comics and graphic novels covers up to three items per box.

You do need it when:

• A tier has four or more pieces
• You're mixing books with non-book add-ons like pins, prints, stickers or apparel
• Something has to be assembled, signed, numbered or matched (signed copy #112 goes to backer #112)
• You're building a subscription box or a retail bundle that ships as one SKU

What kitting costs

Kitting is priced per extra item, on top of the per-order pick-and-pack fee. On our public rate sheet, each item past the first three adds a small fee, $0.25 and up for comics, and it drops to $0.10–0.20 per item once a tier hits six or more pieces. Real assembly work (slipcases, bundles, custom inserts) is quoted separately, because a job that takes ten seconds and a job that takes two minutes shouldn't cost the same.

So for that six-item deluxe tier: the per-order fee covers the first three items, and the other three add well under a dollar. The fee is rarely what hurts. What hurts is the bigger box and the heavier postage that come with a six-item tier, plus the one thing that disqualifies a book package from Media Mail: merch in the box. If you haven't read our Media Mail post, read it before you finalize tiers. Our crowdfunding fulfillment cost guide walks through the full per-backer math.

Figures come from our rate sheet; exact pricing shifts with weight, fragility and quantity, which is what a quote is for.

How to design tiers that kit clean

Most kitting problems are tier-design problems that show up three months later. A few rules we'd give our past selves:

1. Build each tier out of whole tiers. Deluxe = Standard + pins + print. If every tier is the one below it plus something, packers can't get it wrong.
2. Put the chaos in add-ons. Add-ons are picked individually anyway. Twelve tiers with tiny differences is where mistakes live.
3. Give every item its own SKU and label. Variant covers that look alike from the spine are the number one source of mispacks. If two things can be confused, label them like they will be.
4. Mock up every tier and weigh it boxed. One physical sample of each tier, in its real packaging, on a scale. That number sets your shipping price.
5. Decide what ships separately. Sometimes a book by Media Mail plus a small merch mailer costs less than one heavy mixed box.
6. Send clean counts. A manifest that says what's arriving, how many, and in which cartons saves a day of receiving.

What we need from you to kit a campaign

• The tier list, with exactly what's in each
• An add-on list with SKUs
• Your backer export from the pledge manager once surveys are locked
• Any matching rules (signed, numbered, personalized)
• Packaging preferences: bag and board, rigid mailer, box

With that in hand, our crowdfunding fulfillment team can tell you per-tier cost before your inventory ever lands in San Antonio.

The short version

Kitting is the difference between "we shipped your order" and "we shipped the right six things in one box, undamaged." It costs cents per item when the tiers are designed well and real money when they aren't. Design the tiers with the packing table in mind and it mostly takes care of itself.

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