Built to Get It Right: How Unicity & ShipMonk Built a Custom Fulfillment Process for Complex, Made-to-Order Kits

At a glance

• Company: Unicity International, a health and wellness brand serving 50+ markets.
• Challenge: Complex partner orders, similar-looking products, and packing errors that affected multiple consumers.
• Solution: Kit on Demand, a custom fulfillment process designed around Unicity’s unique product combinations.
• Results: Improved order accuracy, reduced customer call volume, fewer replacement shipments, greater confidence introducing new flavors, and monthly order volume up more than 7x since 2024.

When one mistake becomes 30

Unicity traces its roots to the Rexall Drug Company and has spent decades building a business around health and wellness. Today, the brand offers a range of products, including its flagship Balance and Unimate, as well as protein powders, electrolytes, matcha, and other supplements, available in more than 60 countries.

As the business grew, so did its product catalog. Partners could order kits with different combinations of products and flavors, giving them flexibility to meet their customers’ needs. But that flexibility created a challenge behind the scenes: making sure every order was packed correctly.

The Feel Great kit, which pairs Balance with Unicity’s Unimate yerba mate drink, has around 40 variations on its own, according to Melissa Marotta, Head of Merchant Success at ShipMonk. Many of the products looked nearly identical, with the same branding and only subtle color differences between flavors.

ShipMonk typically handled bundles by assembling them ahead of time based on forecasted demand. Unicity’s orders didn’t fit that model. Each kit needed to be built as the order came in, with the right products in the right quantities.

For a brand selling premium products, getting those details right mattered.

A single mistake could have consequences well beyond one package. Partners often ordered for multiple consumers, meaning the wrong combination could lead to numerous complaints and replacement shipments.

“One order could lead to 30 problems,” Melissa explains. “One mistake ends up being 30 mistakes.”

And Unicity was growing month over month. With more orders and new flavors on the horizon, the team needed a fulfillment process that could keep up without putting its reputation at risk.

“If we introduce another flavor, how much of this is going to be incorrect? How are we going to recover? Our reputation is on the line,” says Cody Williams, Senior Director of North America Operations at Unicity.

A partnership built around solving the problem

Unicity brought the challenge to ShipMonk, and both teams got to work.

The solution required more than a change on the packing line. The instructions available to packers didn’t clearly account for every product combination. The teams needed to understand the gaps, rethink parts of the process, and build a better way to work together.

ShipMonk brought in its Merchant Success, Operations, Technology, and Engineering teams. Unicity’s team shared its product standards and spent time in ShipMonk’s warehouses training packers. ShipMonk’s team visited Unicity to see how the products were made and understand the details that mattered when preparing an order.

The technical collaboration was just as hands-on. The development teams exchanged files, reviewed code together, and worked through the differences in how each business handled orders.

Both sides made changes. Unicity adjusted how it submitted orders, while ShipMonk adapted its process to match the complexity of the kits. Visual guides showing the possible product combinations gave packers a clear reference at the station, reducing the guesswork involved in selecting similar-looking products.

For Cody, the goal was to build accuracy into the process itself.

“It really had to come down to: we have to make it to where you cannot make a mistake,” he says.

The teams were working together to create a process that could handle Unicity’s unique requirements consistently, even as its catalog continued to grow.

A custom process for every combination

That collaboration led to Kit on Demand, a custom fulfillment process that assembles each kit at pack-out according to the partner’s order.

Rather than relying on pre-built bundles, ShipMonk selects the specific product variations needed for each order and follows a defined sequence for packing them. The process gives Unicity the flexibility to offer different combinations while giving packers clear instructions for how each kit should come together.

“It’s about the customer presentation when they open that package,” Melissa says.

The distinction matters. Unicity doesn’t have to limit its product combinations to fit a standard fulfillment model, and its team doesn’t have to build the infrastructure to manage that complexity on its own.

The result is a process designed around how Unicity actually does business, with both teams working together to make sure the details are right.

More confidence to grow

With Kit on Demand in place, Unicity began seeing a meaningful difference in its day-to-day operations. Orders started going out right the first time, which meant fewer complaints, lower call volume, and fewer replacement shipments.

For Cody, taking that pressure off Unicity’s sales, operations, and marketing teams “was worth it in the end, to go through the challenge and learn how to do this together.”

The partnership has grown alongside the business. Unicity began working with ShipMonk at a single location, processing a few thousand orders a month. Today, it ships 60k+ orders a month and Unicity has moved all of its US fulfillment to ShipMonk.

Since Unicity started shipping with ShipMonk in 2024, its monthly order volume has grown more than 7x, and ShipMonk has shipped more than 750k packages for the brand.

ShipMonk’s fulfillment network has also helped Unicity reach consumers faster and at better shipping rates, according to Cody. When inventory runs short at one location, orders can move to another facility.

Now, the team can focus on developing products and serving its partners with greater confidence.

“We’ll release several new flavors coming up, and I don’t have to worry about what’s going to happen, because I know it’s just going to be captured correctly,” Cody says.

Unicity’s operations, sales, and marketing teams can spend more time on their own priorities, knowing they have a fulfillment partner equipped to manage the complexity behind each order.

“[ShipMonk was] able to take over the complexities and the nuances of doing fulfillment that we just didn’t have the time or the capability to grow ourselves,” Cody says. “We didn’t want to step into that world and try to do it better than somebody else, when they could already do it for us.”

For Unicity, the partnership has turned a growing fulfillment challenge into a process that supports what’s next. For ShipMonk, it’s an example of what Merchant First looks like in practice: working alongside a merchant to understand its business, solve the right problem, and build for the future.

As Melissa puts it, “Merchant first, to me, means that we are a strategic partner and an extension of the merchant’s business, rather than another vendor or provider.”