Allowing customers to "build a box" (buy, but not ship, and keep adding to it)

We’re a small e-commerce business that would like to use Shopify but we’re having trouble figuring out if it is possible to set up our shop to do a very specific thing that is essential to our business model. We sell physical products and we’ll be releasing different, limited stock items throughout the day, each day. We’d like customers to be able to do the following:

  • Place (and pay for) an order, but choose a “build my box” option and not ship the items immediately.

  • Place and pay for subsequent orders with the same “build my box” option (essentially, not shipping anything and not paying for shipping at the time).

  • When the customer is ready, we’d like them to be able to come in, view all of the items that they have ordered (across multiple orders) and click a “ship my box” option.

  • At that time, the system would automatically calculate shipping, using all items across all unfulfilled orders in the “box”, and charge them for shipping only.

We are trying to figure out if this is possible, both on the backend (we’d want to automate all of this so it’s feasible for us at scale) and in terms of creating a seamless interface for the customer (they’d need a view of their “box” and what’s in it at any given time) on Shopify. We realize we may need a developer and possibly third-party apps, but at this point we’re trying to figure out if it is even possible to do this on Shopify. We’ve looked at many videos, tutorials, and threads and have not come across this exact technical challenge yet. Thanks for any insight you can provide!

I’m searching for a similar option. Have you found a solution.

@DOFWAX , @COCRD really you would need development for something of this nature and with so many complex moving parts and concepts.

Something could be hobbled together with multiple off the shelf apps for each step , or scripted using an automation app like usemechanic so you don’t have to do full app development.

Possibly using draft orders and order editing

https://tasks.mechanic.dev/create-a-draft-order-from-the-cart

https://tasks.mechanic.dev/demonstration-order-editing