How to manage Inventory for Mystery boxes

Managing inventory for mystery boxes is different from managing inventory for fixed bundles. This guide explains the limitations, the recommended approach, and how to handle edge cases to ensure you never oversell.

Limitations

Inventory syncing for parent product is only possible for bundles because bundles have a fixed composition.

In the case of mystery boxes, there is always a probability factor involved. For each customer order, the app dynamically picks unique items from a product pool. Because of this randomness, it becomes mathematically impossible to calculate a minimum or feasible inventory for the parent mystery box product based on changes in the inventory of its child SKUs.

As a result, direct inventory syncing between the parent mystery box and child items is not supported.

Recommended Solution

For the parent mystery box product, we recommend assigning a comfortable inventory number at the fulfillment location (for example, 100 or 1000) and then using our Low Inventory Automation to prevent overselling.

How Low Inventory Automation Works

With this automation, you can define a threshold value like 4 or 10.

When the total cumulative inventory of all items in a product pool reaches this threshold i.e most of the items in the product pool are now out of stock, the app will automatically trigger the action you select, such as:

• Marking the parent mystery box as out of stock
• Sending a warning email

This ensures that even if the parent mystery box shows an inventory of, for example, 27, but the child items are depleted, the app will automatically update the parent mystery box inventory to 0 — ensuring you never oversell.

We’re also sharing a detailed step-by-step guide for setting up this feature for your reference.

FAQ

What if my campaign is performing well and I want to sell more mystery boxes?

Absolutely possible.

If you’re getting a strong response from your campaign and want to continue selling more mystery boxes, you can configure the automation to send a warning email.

This warning will notify you that the total inventory of the product pool is running low, allowing you to update the product pool with in stock products, save the mystery box and update the inventory to a comfortable number in shopify admin.

This gives you full control while keeping inventory safe.

Edge Cases

Child Items Are Managed by a 3PL Location

If your child items are available at a location controlled by a 3PL, you can handle this setup as follows:

• Set the inventory of the parent mystery box only at your in-house location (as adding inventory on the 3PL will not be possible for mystery box which is a  product for your 3PL  )

• In the app, pick the location of your 3PL from the inventory stock location “Default Inventory Location” (screenshot attached) you can find this setting by going app setting go to general here look for Inventory Stock Location card.

  

Once enabled, the app will not rely on the order’s fulfillment location. Instead, it will check inventory from the location you’ve selected in the app settings.