Products as variants and as individual items
 

Hello,
I'm launching a watch website for a client but we have run into a major problem. We already have 150 watches added as individual items. Some of the 150 watches are "related", for example same style just different color band, or face or bezel. Basically we want have products as individual items (like it is now) but at the same time have those individual products be the product variants. Worst case scenario we would have to re-add 5-10 product variants as color options even though the products are already in the store.

Can anyone help me out by pointing me in a direction or a mod? Has anyone had this problem? I can't believe after all these years x-cart still makes everyone add variants manually. Why cant we make different products part of one group?

Thanks
All help is greatly appreciated.
Have a good day.
-INEEDHELP!

Re: Products as variants and as individual items
 

Anyone? This is a huge issue!
Not even the so called "X-cart Pros"?
Anyone from X-cart care to comment on this?

Re: Products as variants and as individual items
 

You could try Product Configurator, which is included, or a bundling add-on like this one:

http://www.bcsengineering.com/store/product-bundle-for-x-cart.html

Your description isn't clear to me. It's possible there is another way to accomplish what you are trying to do. :)

Re: Products as variants and as individual items
 

You can have them as variants and individual products but they will be treated as different products by the cart with different skus. There is no "products grouping" in XC unless you have this custom coded to group and show these products together. You masy be able to achieve something similar with different categories and grouping the products by category

Re: Products as variants and as individual items
 

Cherie you're right, I didnt do a good job explaining the situation.

Basically every store on the web:
1 item in 5 different colors are shown both on the specific item's page and as 5 different items with different colors when you are browsing through a product list.


X-Cart system:
1 item in 5 different colors are only shown as 1 item on the product list and 5 different colors on the specific item's page.


Which means, if you have 1 shirt in 5 colors , and the customer doesn't like the color shown he wont click into it. There is nothing to indicate that there are more color options. I'm not looking to add a "more color options" line when hovered. From my experience with the web and building websites you have to be very obvious in everything you do.

Thanks guys. does anyone have any other help they can offer? This should be embarrassing to x-cart that they have no option on their store to do this after all these years.](*,)

Re: Products as variants and as individual items
 

The use custom thumbnails for products may help to indicate the item has more colour options.

Re: Products as variants and as individual items
 

I've had a similar problem, my solution is to list each color of the same item as individual, unique and seprate products - with the only difference between the two being color. Both of the items are in the same catagory, so when a customer clicks that catagory, they will see all the colors.

I'm using the Advance Filter by BCS Engineering to allow the customer to drill down to their desired item.

It's a little "clunky", but it makes things clear (I beleieve) for the customer to find what they are looking for easily. I hope this helps.

Re: Products as variants and as individual items
 

Another similar method is to use Upselling Products to display the other products for the different colors on the product page.