Hi Kevin. I apologize for this long question, but we need your best advice on this. I'm hoping you've had experience with this kind of dataset before....

Our client has about 100 products (clothing items) at this time. Each product has a fixed price with a basic design, but can be ordered with different designs printed on them. Some designs incur an upcharge (e.g., +$3.00, $5.00, etc.), others a downcharge – (e.g. -$3.00, $5.00, etc.).
 

Some of the products have just a few design options (variants); others have dozens of design options. In most cases, if a design fits on the garment, you can order it for an additional fee. So, in some cases, the number of available designs could be 40 or 50. Plus, there are size and, color variants as well.
 

So, for example, "Product A" could have:

• four color variants (e.g., red, blue, green, white),
• seven size variants (s, m, l, xl, 1x, 2x, 3x), and
• 40 or more design variants

While "Product B" could have :

• three color variants,
• seven size variants, and
• five design variants.

Which of course, means there could be a huge number of possible product/variant combinations.

 

Also, this is a wholesale, B-to-B website (with a corresponding B-C catalog site from which purchases cannot be made), so wholesale customers should be able to order various quantities in each combination (on each screen, if possible) (while retail customers can only view them). So, for example, a wholesale customer might order:

• 12 white, small with design A
• 6 red, medium, with design C
• 6 red, medium, with design F
• 8 green, large, with design D

 
And so on.

Can you advise us on the most efficient and effective way to reflect all of these options in the cart and/or database? Of course, we'd like to bulk upload all of this initially. If we need to do some of this data/product/variant management directly in the database, we could. But we would certainly appreciate your suggestions.

 

Finally, another question: the client has asked us if they can have two suggestion areas in the product detail page. For example:

“If you like <>, you might also like this…”

And

“We recommend these designs (variants) for this product” with thumb images, if possible.

Any ideas on that?

Thanks very much.

Thanks Kevin. I'm thinking the cart can handle it, with the "unlimited product variants" feature, but am not sure how to implement it or do it efficiently. Of course, if we can do photos for the variants, that would be great, although i realize it may not be possible to show 40 variants in the product detail page. so we are open to putting all the various designs on a 'design options' page where they can see them, and they can then make their selection from the product page(?).

Thanks again.

Hi Armando,

I appreciate your patience with this difficult setup. Sounds to me like your going to need to use the variant/conditional variant feature. The four colors would be the primary variants, the sizes would be conditional variants of the colors, then the designs offered would be conditional variants of the sizes available and using the "Price Adjustment' feature, enter either a positive or negative amount to factor in the prices determined for each color, size, or design according what is selected.

In regards to the second part of your setup, you have two options.

The first efficient way to grant your retail/wholesale clients access to specific product pages would be to add our BuyNow module on user specific "Catalog" pages with the View Permissions set to DNN roles that correspond to the users that are eligible to view those products. This will enable customers who belong to that role/s, access to that page and the products within it. You will also be able to hide all the prices and Add To Cart buttons for your retail section to prevent them form checking out and display your prices for whole-sellers and allow them to add items to thier Cart and checkout.

The second option would be for you to offer multi-tiered pricing to wholesalers, retail customers. Smith Cart supports adding up to two levels of member pricing based on the logged in users DNN role. This will allow you to create an ecommerce site with an unlimited multi tier pricing scheme by product. So you would be able to hide all the prices if a user is not logged in and once logged in and the belong to the role you have specified for member pricing, your whole-sellers will be able to view the product prices.

To add member pricing for your product click on the “Member Pricing” button in the top navigation of the product setup screen.

Member Price Label 1 – Member price label 1 is the label that shows up next to member price 1 on the product listing and product detail pages.

Member Price 1 – Member price 1 is the member price that shows up on the product listing and product detail pages when the user is logged in and is a member of the role that has been assigned to this member price level.

Member Price Label 2 – Member price label 2 is the label that shows up next to member price 2 on the product listing and product detail pages.

Member Price 2 – Member price 2 is the member price that shows up on the product listing and product detail pages when the user is logged in and is a member of the role that has been assigned to this member price level. If second level member pricing is defined for a product then the user will be presented with a radio button option on the product details page to choose either member price 1 or member price 2.

Member Role – Dropdown list of all the current roles available in your portal. Choose a role from the dropdown list that you want to assign to the pricing tier being defined. When a user is logged in and they are part of a DNN role that has been assigned member pricing the product listing page and product detail page will show the member pricing defined for the appropriate role. In order to activate member pricing by discounts in your store the “Member Pricing By Role” radio button option must be selected in the BuyNow module settings.

For the third part of your question, the related products feature gives you the ability to cross-sell, up-sell or recommend additional products to customers. From the product setup screen click the “Related
Products” button on the top menu. Once on the Related Products screen, the list box on the left titled “Master Product List” contains a listing of all products currently setup in your store. The list box on the right titled “Related Products” contains a listing of the products you have selected as related products.

To create add related product do the following:
1. Edit the product that you want to add a related product to.
2. In the list box on the left, highlight the product you want to add as a related product
4. Click the arrow button pointing to the right >>
5. Click the “Update” button and the bottom to save

If you have setup related products they will be displayed in a tab titled “Related
Products” on the product detail page.

Thanks,

Hi Armando,

The product import feature has not yet been programmed to add conditional variants. If you would like a quote for us to add the feature please send an email to sales@smith-consulting.com with a link to this forum post. As a work around, you could use the new Product Clone features. Cloning a product makes a copy of it with every attribute (except the name, price and sku) to exactly the same as the original product. This is an easy way to create multiple products that are mostly identical, by simply cloning the first product and making the small changes that are necessary. To clone a product: do the following:

• Go to the Store Admin Menu and click the "Manage Products" button
• Locate the product you want to clone and click the "Clone" link next to the product.
• A popup window will be displayed. In the popup window enter the new product name, sku and price for the new product you are creating.
• Click the "Clone Now" button and the product will be cloned.

You could also use the Advanced Product Clone, accessed via the product setup screen product setup screen the advanced product clone feature allows the store admin to duplicate a product's data across a subset of products.

• Select would the source template product sku.
• Enter SKU matching criteria (simple wildcard search) and click the filter button to retrieve destimation products to update
• Select fields to copy tabs 1-5, descriptiopns 1-5, photos, (main + gallery + zoom) and weight.
• Click "Clone Now" button to clone products

Thanks,