For merchants

Do circle discounts actually pay for themselves?

Compounding benefit of CoBuy
+$22,598/moadded revenue
+$9,902/moadded profit
16.4×your plan cost
+25.9%on product margin

Enter your numbers below and watch consolidated shipping and new customers fund the discounts — then compound month after month.

Your baseline

Currency
Non-USD values use purchasing-power-parity scaling — switching converts your inputs
Business category
Fills in typical values below — change any of them
Average order value$85
Total orders per month1,000
All orders you ship — pick the CoBuy share in the results
Fulfillment
3PL separates warehouse pick & pack fees from carrier freight — consolidation saves both
Cost per shipment$10
Shipping + pick & pack, per package
Product gross margin45%
Growth spend
Customer acquisition cost (CAC)$55
Suggested: $55 for Other at ~$85,000/mo (2025–26 benchmarks)
Counted as avoided ad spend on new customers won through circles

How your circles form and buy

CoBuy-modeled estimates — adjust any control to customize.
Typical circle size4 members
Members per buying circle
Circles shipping together60%
Share of circles consolidating to one address
CoBuy enabled new customers20%
Joiners buying from you for the first time — the rest are repeat customers
CoBuy enabled repeat customers70%
Repeat orders that only exist because a friend's invite triggered them — the rest count as orders you'd have gotten anyway: no gain credited, but their discount is still charged
Profitable with your inputs even at 0% — every attributed repeat order is pure upside.
Your CoBuy setup
Circle discount levels (average)10%
Most stores land at 5–10% — applies to every circle order
Same-address bonus5%
Paid only on circles shipping together
CoBuy plan
Auto = cheapest plan for your ~$22,185/mo volume; plans also differ in features.
Founding offer
First 100 stores: Boost at 1.2% instead of 1.8% for 12 months after the trial.
At 30% adoption of your 1,000 orders/month, CoBuy creates +$6,916/month in value — 10.8× your plan cost — netting you +$6,273/month (+$75,281/year) after the subscription

Net benefit from CoBuyat each adoption level of your 1,000 orders/month

Share of orders going through circles — click a level to update the breakdown.

CoBuy ROI breakdown

What you give your customers (300 orders /month)
Circle discounts10% on $25,500 revenue
$2,550
Same-address bonus5% on the 60% shipping together
$765
What you get back
Shipping saved135 fewer shipments /month
$1,215
New customers — margin + ad spend avoided45 new customers /month at ~$55 CAC
$4,196
CoBuy-driven repeat orders — margin126 repeat orders /month that wouldn't exist otherwise
$4,819
Value created per monthgains − discounts — 10.8× your plan cost$6,916
CoBuy plan costBoost fee + 1.8% on CoBuy-enrolled items − $36 of free WhatsApp updates−$642
Net benefit per month$6,273
Every $1 spent on discounts + fees returns $2.59
Not counted: the circle starter's own orders.
Future reorders and referrals are valued in the year-one section below — never in this month-one view.

Compounding benefit of CoBuy12-month LTV: what this month's CoBuy customers are really worth

Margin realized over the following 12 months — kept out of the month-one view above. Margin-only, no ad-spend credit.
First-year reorders per new customer1×
Your store's baseline, before any CoBuy lift — 12× = a monthly consumable
Repeat-rate lift on peer-won customers+16%
Wharton benchmark: +16% — e-commerce studies run 30–50%
Members referring one additional customer10%
Benchmark: 5–15% of customers share post-purchase — circle members already have
Reorders from CoBuy-won new customers45 new customers × 1 reorders × +16% lift, at $38 margin each$1,997$23,960
Extra reorders from CoBuy-driven repeat customersOnly the +16% lift counts — their baseline reorders were yours anyway$771$9,253
Referral ripple23 of 225 joiners bring one customer — starters not counted, first-order margin only$861$10,328
Year-one customer value created$3,628$43,541
+$22,598/monthadded revenue: incremental top-line CoBuy customers ring up — new + CoBuy-only orders now, their reorders & referrals over the year
+$9,902/monthafter your CoBuy plan: month-one $6,273 + year-one $3,628 (~$118,822/yr run-rate)
16.4×your CoBuy plan cost
+25.9%on your total product margin

Already offering a subscribe & save discount?

The same discount budget, restructured as CoBuy levels — shipping consolidation picks up most of the bill.

Selling wholesale or bulk at a deep discount?

Circles move the same volume at a fraction of the discount — and every buyer is your own customer.

Also built in — deliberately not priced into this model

Discount abuse protection

Same-address bonuses count once per household — billing addresses are normalized so split-spelling tricks can't create fake households. Circle codes carry usage limits and expire at settlement; late stragglers are auto-cancelled. Your discounts can't leak.

No promo calendar to run

Circles run year-round, holiday peaks included — no campaign builds, no flash-sale scheduling, no stacking conflicts to debug. The discount you configured is the whole setup.

Every buyer is your customer

Names, emails, and opt-ins land in your store — not a wholesaler's or a marketplace's. The year-one section priced their reorders; the list itself we leave uncounted.

Ready to see this modeled on your actual catalog?

Bring these numbers to a 30-minute walkthrough — we'll configure a live demo store with your products and margins.

Book a demo

One transactional email with the report — no marketing list.

Assumptions — deliberately conservative

  • Shipping savings use a 0.9 consolidation factor (matching CoBuy's in-app analytics), stepping to 0.95 once a consolidated parcel carries 8+ units — larger parcels ship cheaper per unit — and only the share of circles you set as shipping together.
  • In 3PL mode, pick & pack uses published 2026 benchmarks: base order fee ~$2.75 (ranges $1.50–$3.50), each additional item ~$0.50 ($0.30–$0.75). Every order consolidated away saves its base fee minus one additional-item pick — exact fee arithmetic, so no 0.9 haircut (that factor models larger-parcel freight; the 3PL picks every item either way). The subscription comparison charges one base fee per subscription order; the wholesale bulk order is charged honestly as a single order — one base fee, the rest at the additional-item rate — which makes circles carry more pick & pack than wholesale, not less.
  • The circle starter's own order is never counted as CoBuy-won growth, a saved shipment, or a referral-ripple member — the exclusion applies everywhere. Future reorders and referrals are valued only in the separate year-one section: margin-only, repeat customers credited just the lift, referred customers at first-order margin with no ad-spend credit. Its annual figures are 12 months of customers all doing this (a full year at this pace) and count only the first 12 months of each customer — the benefits don't stop there; the model does. The +16% repeat lift default is the Wharton/Goethe referral study (16% higher LTV, 18% lower churn); e-commerce studies report 30–50% higher repeat rates for referred customers. The 10% referral default is the midpoint of the 5–15% post-purchase share-rate benchmark — conservative for members who already shared to build their circle; the 30% cap matches the share of satisfied customers who ever refer (Texas Tech: 83% would, 29% do).
  • Joiner orders count as new customers (margin + avoided ad spend) or repeat customers ordering because of CoBuy (margin). Lower the repeat preset to treat some repeat orders as ones you'd have gotten anyway (no gain counted). The discount cost line still charges every order.
  • The subscription comparison assumes you cover shipping (standard for subscribe & save). Levels: your subscription discount unlocks at 3+ members, +5 points at 8+, +10 points at 15+. Each card moves whole circles (4×3 = 12, 2×8 = 16, 1×15 = 15 units) and is measured against the same units sold by subscription — which runs past a year at the deeper levels. The circle side charges the level discount and your same-address bonus as separate lines — whole circles ship together, which is exactly the condition that triggers the bonus. Gains within $5 of zero display as breakeven. Even so, the deepest level's total discount stays below the 30–50% merchants typically give to move the same quantity as a bulk order. Time-to-revenue assumes one circle forms per month.
  • The same-address bonus is charged only on circles shipping together — the same circles whose saved shipments fund it.
  • The wholesale comparison uses your bulk order quantity and one merchant-paid carton per 6 units. Each card is a level unlocking at 3+/8+/15+ members at fixed 10/15/20% discounts; all cards move the same quantity, so a level's last circle may run partial. The circle side likewise charges the level discount and your same-address bonus as separate lines. Wholesale volume is contractually committed and ships up front; circle volume isn't guaranteed and paces at roughly one circle per month — this compares margin and customer ownership, not a recommendation to drop wholesale.
  • The plan cost line is net of services bundled free with the plan: WhatsApp order updates (4 messages per CoBuy order at ~$0.03 market rate, on Boost and Accelerate) and AI configuration recommendations (~$25/mo, on Accelerate).
  • The suggested discount ladder is an example — levels are fully configurable per product, category, or bundle in the app.
  • "Ad spend avoided" = what the new customers would have cost at published 2025–26 CAC benchmarks (varies by category and store size). New customers only — never repeats.
  • Circle-behavior scenarios are CoBuy-modeled estimates, not yet measured across live stores — every value can be overridden.