What the numbers say
The gift is a pair of socks. One unit at $100.00 comes with none, two units with one and three units with two, all at full price and shipped free. The first tier's gift costs $9.33 and the second tier's two gifts $18.66: each gift's unit cost and one more pick.
After its gift the two-unit order keeps $9.76, against $3.18 for one unit, and the three-unit order keeps $16.74 after two gifts. A buyer who steps up from one unit to two adds $6.58 of margin, and from two to three $6.98.
A buyer who was taking two units anyway now costs $9.33 more, and one who was taking three $18.66 more. At the first tier, one step-up pays for the gifts of 0.7 orders that already qualified. Tiers pay when they sit just above what most orders already hold.
The cost structure, and where it comes from
| Price | $100.00, a pair of sneakers. Allbirds, Men's Tree Runner, read 13 October 2026 |
|---|---|
| Unit cost | $59.00. From the income statement: revenue $152.5 million, gross profit $62.6 million, a gross margin of 41.0%. Allbirds (Smartbird, Inc.), annual report (Form 10-K) for the year ended 2025-12-31, read 13 October 2026 |
| Pick and pack | $3.20 per order and $0.48 for each extra item. Fulfill.com, 3PL pricing benchmarks (The Fulfillment Advisor 2025 survey of 600+ warehouses), read 23 September 2026 |
| Shipping label | USPS Ground Advantage, commercial, Zone 5, by weight rounded up to the pound: 1 lb $9.29 · 2 lb $10.50 · 3 lb $12.12 · 4 lb $13.89 · 5 lb $14.53. Packed weight is an assumption: 2.5 lb per unit. USPS Notice 123, USPS Ground Advantage Commercial, Zone 5 (effective 4 October 2026), read 13 October 2026 |
| Card fees | 2.9% + $0.30 per order: Shopify Payments' online rate for a standard card on the Basic plan in the United States. Higher plans pay a lower rate, and premium cards a higher one. Shopify's pricing page for the United States, online standard card rates, read 12 October 2026 Rates by plan and country |
| Refund reserve | 19.3%, NRF's estimate of online sales returned in 2025, across all categories. NRF and Happy Returns, 2025 Retail Returns Landscape (15 October 2025), read 23 September 2026 |
| Gift | A pair of socks: unit cost $8.85, retail $15.00. A $15 pair of socks, costed at Allbirds' reported gross margin. |
The offer, as an agent writes it
An agent writes this offer as one document for Offer Suite's API, validated against the offer schema. Below is one option of it: what the buyer gets and the price it promises. Offer Suite checks with a real cart that checkout charges exactly the prices above.
Show one option 3 options · excerpt
{
"key": "two-one-gift",
"display": {
"title": "2 units and a gift"
},
"lines": [
{
"role": "main",
"quantity": 2,
"purchase": {
"type": "one_time"
}
},
{
"role": "gift",
"quantity": 1,
"purchase": {
"type": "one_time"
}
}
],
"pricing": {
"promise": {
"firstChargeCents": 20000,
"renewalChargeCents": null
}
}
}How Offer Suite validates, versions and publishes a document like this one: offer documents.
Questions
Are tiered gifts profitable for footwear brands?
On these costs, with a pair of socks as the gift, two units and one gift keep $9.76 per order and three units and two gifts $16.74, against $3.18 for one unit. The tiers are profitable when they move buyers up; given to buyers already at a tier, they only cost the gift.
What does a second gift tier cost footwear brands?
$18.66 on an order of three here, for two gifts, against $9.33 for the one gift of the first tier. The step from two units to three adds $6.98 of margin after it.