Bundle pricing calculator
“What if everyone picks the three most expensive items?”
A fixed-price mix & match bundle is a promise you make before the shopper chooses. So its margin is not a number, it is a range — and the only end of that range worth planning around is the bottom one. Put your pool in and find out what the worst basket earns you.
The pool
Every product a shopper is allowed to choose from, with what it sells for on its own and what it costs you.
The offer
The gross margin you will not go below on a bundle.
On, a shopper can fill the whole bundle with your priciest item.
An assumption, not a measurement. At 0 every item is equally likely; at 100 everyone takes the most expensive thing in the pool. It only moves the “likely” figure — the worst case below is exact.
Worst-case margin
32.2%
$65.00 in, $44.10 of stock out — $20.90 left on the worst basket you have agreed to sell.
43.6%
At 35% skew. An estimate.
49.8%
Every item equally likely.
70.9%
Shopper picks the 3 cheapest.
36.3%
Off $102.00 of standalone retail.
This pool is unsafe at this price
The worst basket lands at 32.2%, which is 7.8 points under your floor. Two ways out:
- Charge $73.50 instead of $65.00 — that puts the worst basket exactly on 40%.
- Pull Face serum from the pool and keep the $65.00 price.
The pool, by cost
| Item | Cost | Margin |
|---|---|---|
| Face serumPull | $21.50 | 55% |
| CandleIn worst basket | $14.00 | 56% |
| ShampooIn worst basket | $8.60 | 61% |
| Body wash | $6.20 | 66% |
| Hand cream | $4.10 | 71% |
Margin here is the item’s own, sold on its own — useful for spotting the item that is thin before it ever reaches a bundle.
How the maths works
Margin on a bundle is the bundle price less what the items in it cost you, over the bundle price. The complication is that with mix & match you do not know which items those will be, so the calculator computes the ends of the range exactly and estimates the middle.
The worst case takes the most expensive items in your pool by unit cost — the priciest few if the shopper can only take each item once, or the single priciest item repeated if you allow repeats. This is an exact figure, not a forecast. It is what you have already agreed to sell for the bundle price.
The best case does the same with the cheapest items, and the even spread assumes every item in the pool is equally likely to be picked.
The likely case is the only assumption on the page, and the shopper skew slider is what sets it. Nobody knows how hard your shoppers chase value, so rather than invent an average the slider simply interpolates between the even spread and the worst case. Leave it low if your pool is narrow, push it up if there is a standout premium item that everyone will want. The verdict below the figures never uses it.
The safe price is the worst-case cost divided by one minus your margin floor, which is the price at which the worst basket lands exactly on the floor. The pull list is the other way out: peel the most expensive item off the pool repeatedly until the worst case clears, which finds the shortest such list.
What to do when the worst case fails
Raise the price. The simplest fix and the one merchants resist hardest, usually because the number was picked to hit a round figure. If the worst basket does not work at that figure, the figure is wrong.
Narrow the pool. A mix & match pool does not have to be your whole catalogue. Pulling one premium item out usually rescues the maths, and it costs you less than you think — shoppers who wanted that item specifically will buy it on its own.
Split into tiers. Two bundles at two prices, each with a pool whose items sit in the same cost band. This is the answer when your catalogue is genuinely wide, and it beats one bundle priced for the worst item in it.
Turn off repeats. If the failure only appears with repeats allowed, requiring distinct items caps the damage at your top few costs rather than your single worst one.
Questions
- How do you price a mix and match bundle?
- Work backwards from the worst basket rather than the average one. Take the most expensive items a shopper could put in the bundle, add up what they cost you, and divide that cost by one minus your margin floor. That is the lowest price the bundle can carry. Pricing off the average cost of the pool leaves you exposed every time a shopper picks well.
- What happens if everyone picks the most expensive items?
- That is the worst case, and with a fixed bundle price it is a scenario you have already agreed to sell. The calculator shows exactly what it earns. If the figure is below your floor you have two options: raise the bundle price, or remove the expensive items from the pool so shoppers cannot reach them.
- Should a mix and match bundle let shoppers take repeats?
- It depends on how wide your price range is. Allowing repeats means a shopper can fill the entire bundle with your single most expensive item, so the worst case is that item multiplied by the bundle size rather than a spread of your top few. On a tight pool that barely moves the number. On a pool with one premium product in it, repeats can be the difference between a healthy bundle and a loss leader.
- What margin should a bundle make?
- A bundle usually runs a few points under your standalone margin, because the discount is what makes it worth a shopper's attention. What matters is that the floor is a number you chose deliberately and that the worst basket clears it, rather than an average that happens to look fine.
- Does the bundle discount come off my product margin or my blended margin?
- Neither, really. A fixed-price bundle replaces both. The shopper pays one price and you ship a set of items with their own costs, so the only margin that exists is the bundle's own — bundle price less the cost of whatever went in it. That is why the range matters more than any single figure.
The app that does this for you
Quarter Bundles
Fixed-price mix & match bundles
Shoppers pick their own items from a pool you define and check out with a single bundle line. The real variants are what ship, decrement stock, and show up in your sales reports.
Mix & match / Real inventory / Native checkout
In development
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