How Blake Mill Grew Bundle Engagement By Focusing on High-Intent Customers

Blake Mill is a Manchester-based designer of bold, high-quality men’s shirts, known for distinctive prints that help customers stand out—whether in the boardroom or at the bar. With designs available across multiple product types, from full-body prints to subtle collar and cuff accents, customers often missed out on pieces that complemented their favorite styles.

Bundling presented a clear opportunity to improve product discoverability and drive higher order values, but existing solutions fell short. Implementation challenges, limited flexibility, and 3PL integration issues made it difficult to execute their vision.

Here’s how Blake Mill overcame these hurdles with Simple Bundles, creating a seamless bundling experience that not only worked instantly with their fulfillment systems but also unlocked a smarter, data-driven approach to merchandising.

The challenge: Scaling bundles without operational headaches

Blake Mill needed a way to streamline bundling while improving product discoverability. Customers often missed out on complementary items, and manual bundling approaches led to operational inefficiencies and fulfillment issues.

"We have a lot of products featuring the same print, one as a full body and another with it in the collar and cuff. These prints have stories and inspiration behind them, and we needed a way to group products from the same design story together."
— Ross French, Ecommerce Director at Blake Mill

The solution: Flexible, logistics-friendly bundling

Blake Mill implemented Simple Bundles to eliminate bundling friction while ensuring seamless fulfillment. Unlike previous tools that required complex 3PL configurations, Simple Bundles worked immediately, allowing orders to sync with individual SKUs for smooth processing.

“It was extremely simple. The order still pulls through, showing the SKUs of the individual items added to the bundle. It's very clear that the Simple Bundles approach was extremely smooth—no issues whatsoever,” said Ross.

Blake Mill’s bundling strategy

Blake Mill implemented a three-pronged approach to product bundling, starting with design-based groupings and evolving toward more data-driven configurations based on customer behavior.

1. Design story bundles

The initial strategy focused on creating bundles that told a cohesive design story. Products featuring the same print across different applications—full-body shirts, collar and cuff accents, and casual wear pieces—were grouped together to improve discoverability and encourage multiple purchases.

"We use bundles to group products which are in the same design story together," said Ross. "It's a quick way of allowing people to see a print is available in other formats and other parts of their wardrobe, and then ideally to purchase it in multiple areas in one go."

2. Seasonal gift bundles

Blake Mill prominently featured bundles during key gift-giving periods like Christmas and Valentine's Day, promoting them through homepage banners and dedicated email campaigns. 

These pre-configured gift bundles were designed to offer a more compelling and complete gift option than single garments.

3. Data-driven bundle creation

Rather than relying solely on intuition about which products should be bundled, the team began examining what customers actually purchased together or as sequential purchases within a 30-day window.

"What we are learning is that we thought bundles should be used for design themes, and that's fine, but we're finding that data-driven approaches are more powerful. It's a marketing mantra, right? Listen to what your customer wants and chase that. Don't tell them what you think they should want."
— Ross French, Ecommerce Director at Blake Mill

Basically, instead of just looking at single orders, they analyze first and second purchases within a 30-day window to see what people are buying in sequence. If a pattern shows multiple customers buying the same second product after their first, it indicates a strong bundle opportunity.

"We've begun testing more data-driven approaches of what people actually buy together and are finding that seems to be a more powerful sell," French notes.

Using data to promote bundles to high-intent customers

After curating their bundles, the Blake Mill team realized that paid advertising wasn’t the most effective way to promote them. The high AOV of bundles made them a tougher sell for first-time customers, who typically needed more time to familiarize themselves with the brand before making a larger purchase.

Instead, the team leaned into email marketing as a key channel for bundle promotions. Using Klaviyo’s customer behavior metrics, they identified engaged shoppers—those who had browsed specific product pages, abandoned carts, or demonstrated purchase intent—and tailored bundle messaging accordingly.

"Bundles are featured prominently in our emails to re-engage returning customers or to target people who haven't purchased yet but seem likely to, based on their behavior," explained Ross. "In some cases, bundles can be the push that gets them to convert."

Another key insight was that high-ticket item shoppers were the most likely to purchase bundles. If a customer showed interest in a £150 shirt, they were more inclined to consider a £250 bundle than those engaging primarily with entry-price products.

"They’re probably the kind of customer who could also justify spending £250 on a bundle," said Ross.

By focusing on data-backed segmentation and behavioral triggers, Blake Mill optimized its bundle promotions, ensuring they reached the right customers at the right time—leading to increased engagement and stronger sales.

The results: Higher engagement from the right audience

While still in the early stages of their bundling strategy, Blake Mill has already seen promising results. Gift bundle promotions have generated strong engagement rates and email click-throughs, confirming customer interest in these curated product groupings.

The team also discovered that data-driven product recommendations significantly outperform manually curated bundles.

With Simple Bundles, brands can sell bundles without worrying about operational headaches. Everything is synced seamlessly to your backend systems, so no SKU is left behind.

Install Simple Bundles for FREE on the Shopify app store.