Notes for owners · Business growth
Riding jackets, gloves and boots: selling a new rider's first kit as one bundle
A new rider buys several pieces at once without knowing where to start, so a kit built by riding style, sized piece by piece with a small, honest saving, gives them a plan and you a larger order.
The GullySales team · Updated 17 Oct 2026 · 6 min read
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A new rider messages a week before the bike is delivered: "Got the helmet. What else do I need for office and some weekend rides?" That rider is asking for a plan, not a product. Sell them a first kit built around the riding they will actually do, whether a city commute, weekend highway trips or the monsoon, with a jacket, gloves and footwear that belong together. Size each piece on its own, keep the saving small and honest, and the order grows because the rider finally knows what to buy.
How a first-time rider buys
A first-time rider has a deadline, the day the bike arrives, and almost no vocabulary. Mesh or textile, gauntlet or short cuff, armour level, ankle boot or riding shoe: these mean nothing yet. Somebody else is often paying, a parent or a spouse, and that person wants "the safe stuff" without knowing what it is.
Left alone, they tend to buy in the order they feel the risk. Helmet first, often at the dealership. Then gloves, because they are cheap. A jacket if the budget holds. Boots last. A kit fixes the order by deciding it for them, in one place, at one price they can take back to whoever is paying.
The returning rider is a different buyer. Someone replacing one worn pair of gloves knows exactly what they want, and pushing a kit at them reads as a sales trick. Keep the kit for the new rider, and let everyone else buy pieces.
Build the kits by riding style, not by price
| Kit | Jacket | Gloves | Footwear | Worth offering | Leave out |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| City commute | Mesh jacket with armour at the shoulders and elbows | Short-cuff gloves with knuckle protection | Riding shoes that pass for office wear | A neck tube for dust and sun | Tall boots nobody wears to the office |
| Weekend highway | Textile jacket with a removable thermal liner | Gauntlet gloves that close over the jacket cuff | Ankle-high riding boots | Knee guards or riding pants | A mesh jacket, unless they ride only in summer |
| Monsoon commute | Waterproof jacket, or a rain suit over the city kit | Waterproof gloves | Waterproof boots or boot covers | An anti-fog insert for the visor | Leather, which soaks through and stays wet |
| Pillion add-on | A jacket in the pillion's own size | Gloves in the pillion's size | Closed shoes they already own | A helmet sized for the pillion | Anything in the rider's size "to share" |
Price sits inside each kit, as an entry and a mid version, not across the top.
Describe armour by the wording printed on its own label, copied as it reads, for example "Shoulder and elbow armour: CE-marked, level 1 (as printed on the insert); back pocket empty, protector sold separately". Say plainly which pads come fitted and which pockets are empty. Do not call a jacket "certified" when only the armour inserts carry a mark. Riders who know the difference will read that line closely.
Size each piece on its own
This is where kits go wrong. Jackets are sized by chest, gloves by the palm, boots by foot length and helmets by head circumference. A kit page with one size selector, "M", sends a rider a jacket that fits and gloves that do not, and the whole kit comes back for one piece.
Give the kit page a separate selector for every piece, each with the maker's own chart beside it. Then make the exchange rule match: any one piece can be exchanged for another size without breaking the kit or losing the saving. A rider who has to return a whole kit to fix a glove size may not order one again.
Price the kit, but never the helmet
Price the kit off the real separate total, and show that total beside the kit price so the saving can be checked. Misleading "was" prices also run into consumer protection rules, so check with your adviser before printing one. Two points are particular to riding gear.
Do not discount the helmet to make the kit look cheap. It is the one piece a rider, or the parent paying, should never choose on price, and a kit that leads with "helmet free" teaches exactly that.
Let the rider swap a piece for another in the same tier, say a different glove at the same price, without losing the saving. Riders have strong views about gloves. A kit that forces one pair on them gets broken up at the returns desk.
Our post on the upselling and cross-selling process sets out how to map what pairs with what.
For example: a gear shop in Chandigarh and its trip kit
Imagine a gear shop in Chandigarh that sells online to riders across Punjab and Himachal, many of them planning a first long ride into the mountains. The details are illustrative. It sold a "mountain trip kit" with a single size option. Inside was a mesh jacket that was comfortable in the plains and cold at a high pass. Whole kits came back because the gloves did not fit. One rider wrote that the jacket was useless after the first climb.
The kit had been built around a photo, not the ride. The shop rebuilt it for the trip: a textile jacket with a thermal liner, a thermal inner layer, waterproof gauntlet gloves and ankle boots. Each piece got its own size selector and chart. Single pieces could be exchanged without touching the rest. And a one-page packing list for a first mountain ride went into the box. Thermal liners raised the kit price enough that the shop sold fewer kits at first, though fewer came back.
When not to sell a kit
Skip the kit for riders who already own half of it. Give them a "complete my kit" path instead: they tick what they own, and the page shows only what is missing, with the saving applied to what they buy.
Skip it too for riders with a specific need, such as off-road or track riding. They know the gear they want and will read a bundle as a shop that does not.
Build one kit for the riders you already get
Look at the questions new riders have sent you on WhatsApp and pick the riding style that comes up most: office commute, weekend highway or monsoon. Build that one kit first, with a size selector per piece and the helmet sold at its full price beside it. Put it where a new rider lands. Planning kits like this is upselling and cross-selling work, within our e-commerce sales and marketing group. To plan the kits and the page, tell us what you need.
