Inventory kit item without variants

[Southlander]

Hi Everyone,

We have done the first part for years with Miva. We have candles - 30 to 40 scents at a time with about 100 scents that seasonally come and go. So we have a single product page with the product having 12 attributes for the scents to make a case (mix/match). Every attribute has identical options - 30 to 40 scents being the options. Shopper selects 12 scents on the page (12 attribute options) to make their order.

In the scenario where 2 scents sell out and then 3 arrive on a given day - I have to manually remove and add all the linked attribute options for each scent - 5 in this example. Deleting is fairly quick but adding is slow and tedious.

Today I got the idea of using the inventory tracking/inventory kit builder/variants feature (still uses attributes/options but with inventory), with idea of hiding an option by setting its "part-linked" product to 0 on hand or showing an option by adding say 1000 to its stock level. The issue is variants. Once I get 12 attributes, and then say 35 options under each (for the scents), the system will need to create something like 35x35x35x35x35x35x35x35x35x35x35x35 variants! Lol.

So my question that I already think I know the answer to. Is there a way to do this without the variants?

Thanks -

[Brennan]

Yeah variants are not going to be great here since because the amount of variations that will be generated.

A couple suggestions:

1. You should be able to an attribute template here. If you create the template with the 30 to 40 scents, you should be able to the "link" the template 12 times on the product. This will allow you to add/remove scents in a single location and since each attribute template is linked, it will update all 12 at once.

2. If you don't want to use Attribute Templates, its also possible to update the attributes via XML.

[Southlander]

Templates are a good idea - yes that will at least make it easier.
Thanks.