Nathan,
I'm not sure I am am following you re:
Quote:
|
1. If you're managing your inventory records with a back-office ERP or inventory management system, most of them will have an record/entry for each product SKU as a separate item. So by doing this, your import/export data will more closely match these systems, making it easier to manage.
|
As it stands right now, using variants, my items have a unique sku per color, and when sales are exported, it imports very nicely into our accounting software. Inventory reconciles. We have a separate record for each variant. I still don't understand what your method brings to the table (besides variant groupings, which can be very cool for non-parent/child products, but then we're not really talking about variants then, rather, related products, yes?)
In xcart 4.1.8, if you sell a product that is identical except for color or size, a variant is the logical choice: the seller has one product description for the identical items; each color can have its own image; each color has its own sku/inventory tracking; it's easy/logical for the customer if they are buying more than one of the item-- shirt, blue - shirt, red. 2 items in the cart.
Where I see store owners not "getting it" is when they don't treat variants as unique items... using "product options", where variants should be used.
Amazon's system is just like xcart. A "parent" item is created -- and the "child" items have the skus. There is no "sku" for the parent (well, there is, but it's meaningless). When the customer navigates to any child item, they can switch to any other "child" variant at any time. All child products are related, but inventoried and tracked individually.
BUT, as you said in #3 - all items share a common description -- and this (in my opinion) is good. How many product descriptions do you want to see (as the customer) for the same shirt in 9 colors? Personally, I don't want to see any, except the color of my selected shirt. I really am not understanding what it is you're trying to do, and it seems like re-inventing the wheel to me.
I am really not understanding your motivation for this...
I get that you know your stuff, and are very qualified to do this, but I am not seeing the real-world application - that is, with version 4.1.x of xcart, it's already there, isn't it?
Quote:
|
2. Say you have a shirt with two colors. If one color sells better than the other, you may want to promote the color that isn't selling very well to move your inventory. This would be easier to do if you could use functionality like Special Promotions (and other merchandising and promotional functionality) to apply promotions to that product.
|
How about change the Orderby field to put the lesser selling item as default? Of course any variant can have a different price. Ok, it may take a few extra clicks, but it's not hard to do. We do that on some of our products (that is, a variant has a different selling price than its siblings)
I guess I just don't get it.
