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A mid-size retailer faced stagnant baskets and dwindling repeat visits despite steady traffic. The leadership team commissioned a teardown of the assortment strategy to identify core drivers of revenue. Analysts audited historical sales, margin profiles, and fulfillment costs to map profit-per-item and cross-sell potential. They discovered a clear pattern: a small set of SKUs carried disproportionate demand, while many complementary items sat underutilized in the catalog. The team formed a hypothesis that elevating top performers and curating bundles around them would simplify choices, reduce decision fatigue, and guide shoppers toward higher-value configurations. The objective became to improve AOV without sacrificing conversion or assortment relevance.

The implementation began with a data-driven tiering of products into three groups: core top performers, steady contributors, and opportunistic candidates. Core items received prime placement, richer content, and replenishment guarantees to secure consistent availability. Steady contributors gained supportive visibility, but with safeguards to avoid cannibalization. Opportunistic candidates were culled or repurposed into bundles that paired with core items. Bundling was crafted to address common use cases—the kitchen, the bedroom, and the living room—delivering practical recommendations that felt natural rather than forced. This disciplined approach reduced cognitive load for buyers and aligned merchandising with genuine consumer intent.

To translate theory into practice, the team designed a bundling framework that connected top SKUs with compatible add-ons in a single glance. They tested bundles across price tiers to accommodate different budgets and shopping contexts, ensuring that even modest bundles felt like a complete solution rather than a checkout shortcut. The bundles emphasized value perception, emphasizing savings when items were purchased together and highlighting the incremental benefit of each add-on. Importantly, bundles were not static; they evolved with seasonality, inventory changes, and shifting consumer preferences. This dynamic approach kept the assortment fresh without compromising the integrity of the top-performer core.

A critical component was revisiting the product detail pages. Content was streamlined to foreground the core SKUs and the bundles they supported, while cross-sell prompts appeared in-context, not as intrusive popups. Imagery and social proof were aligned to reinforce the bundle narrative, showing real-world usage and the value stacked within a single order. The brand voice remained consistent, but the messaging highlighted practical outcomes—time saved, fewer decision points, and a more effortless checkout. The result was a cohesive shopping experience that felt tailored yet scalable across categories and channels.

With bundles in place, the merchandising team conducted controlled experiments to quantify impact. They ran A/B tests across homepage placements, category pages, and search results, tracking AOV, conversion rate, and revenue per session. Early data indicated that bundles featuring core SKUs outperformed solitary listings, especially when priced with a perceived discount that did not erode margins. The team also monitored return rates and post-purchase sentiment to ensure that the bundles delivered value without inflating satisfaction issues. Insights showed that customers who engaged with bundles completed purchases more quickly and were more likely to add additional items later in the journey.

The next phase introduced inventory-aware merchandising. Top SKUs were stocked more aggressively to prevent stockouts, while bundles were designed to use available inventory efficiently. When a high-demand item reentered stock, its bundle companions were adjusted to maximize cross-sell opportunities. The supply chain team worked closely with merchandising to forecast demand signals and align promotions with real-time availability. By tying assortment decisions to live inventory data, the retailer minimized mismatch costs and kept customers in a confident, trusted shopping loop. The approach reinforced value while maintaining operational discipline.

The transformation required a cultural shift toward experimentation. Merchandisers began documenting hypotheses, detailing control variables, and sharing outcomes across departments. The cadence of tests increased, enabling rapid learning and more precise iterations. Cross-functional teams—merch, marketing, supply chain, and analytics—met regularly to review performance signals, adjust pricing, and refine bundle logic. This collaborative process helped translate abstract concepts into practical playbooks that could be scaled across regions. Importantly, learnings were codified into guidelines for future assortment changes, ensuring the gains persisted even as market conditions fluctuated.

A broader customer experience effort complemented the product strategy. Email marketing and personalized on-site messages highlighted bundles tailored to the shopper’s past behavior. Retargeting campaigns emphasized bundles that aligned with previously viewed SKUs, reinforcing relevance and reducing friction. In social proof moments, customers shared unboxing experiences and usage tips that validated the bundle approach. The combined effect of relevant messaging and bundled recommendations was a measurable lift in engagement metrics and a stronger sense of value from each visit. The retailer’s brand perception shifted toward being helpful and practical, not merely promotional.

Price architecture evolved in tandem with the bundle strategy. Instead of flat discounts, the retailer introduced tiered savings tied to bundle depth, ensuring that larger bundles produced meaningful value without eroding margins. This approach encouraged shoppers to consider more expansive configurations as their needs grew, increasing average order size without creating purchase hesitation. The pricing narratives were transparent, emphasizing savings, convenience, and a holistic solution rather than price wars. The clarity of the offer helped customers feel confident choosing bundles over single-item purchases, contributing to higher conversion likelihood at decision points.

The results extended beyond immediate basket effects. Average order value climbed as shoppers consistently added complementary items, and conversion improved across major categories. The top-performing SKUs benefited from sustained visibility and replenishment confidence, while bundled propositions created natural pathways to higher-ticket configurations. Customer feedback highlighted appreciation for curated recommendations that felt intuitive and relevant. In aggregate, the retailer achieved a more efficient funnel, with fewer dead-end searches and a smoother progression from discovery to checkout.

The leadership team integrated the teardowns into a repeatable process. Quarterly reviews assessed the strength of the core SKU set, the vitality of bundles, and the health of cross-sell propositions. The process stressed ongoing data hygiene—clean product data, accurate inventory, and timely pricing updates—to keep the assortment aligned with consumer intent. Training materials and playbooks were distributed to store partners and digital teams, ensuring consistent execution across touchpoints. The case demonstrated that prioritizing top performers with complementary bundles could yield durable gains, even amid seasonal shifts and competitive pressures.

Looking forward, the retailer planned to expand the framework into new categories and markets. They prepared a phased rollout to introduce bundling in emerging lines while maintaining strict guardrails to protect margins. By maintaining a tight feedback loop between customer behavior signals and assortment decisions, the business aimed to sustain higher AOV and conversion rates over the long term. The teardown underscored a fundamental principle: clear, data-informed priorities—centered on core SKUs and thoughtful bundles—can transform how customers buy, perceive value, and engage with a brand over time.