Ideas Welcome

SteveSteve Member Posts: 81
We will be offering lamps in which we will wire for international configurations (EU, AU, UK, etc…). These re-wired lamps are actually US wired lamps that are re-purposed. (unwired and re-wired). Our hope was to not create an inventory number for each lamp as it makes product management a nightmare as we have (10+) version of the same lamp.

1. Is this a option for using Variants? Down falls? Or gotcha’s?
2. Are there any options other than creating each version with its unique item no?

Some facts to realize is we are using kitting so variants would have to be reflected on this level as well.


Your thoughts are appreciated.
Steve

Comments

  • Miklos_HollenderMiklos_Hollender Member Posts: 1,598
    I implemented variants for a client who is selling clothes - that is the textbook case for that, color and size variants of the same t-shirt.

    Or so I thought. Oh my. I had to change every single report that shows sales, inventory or anything per item number to break it down to variants, 10+ reports, plus invoices and really every document. I wasted a lot of time on that.

    In hindsight, this was stupid. I should have known that that guy is a micromanager type - I would be, too, in this kind of job, if we are running out of XXL red variants clothes of a given shirt I would want to know about it.

    So what I should have done - and I recommend doing this is - is to develop a simple item generator / item configurator. There is nothing wrong with having 10 item numbers for every lamp, the only thing that is hard is entering them manually, this is why an item configurator is better. Generally the idea is you enter a base product and some kind of matrix pops up, you choose the versions, and it should create those items.
  • jglathejglathe Member Posts: 639
    Hi,

    That's good advice. I had a similar experience with uniform management, and the best way is to have an item number per part(type, long/short, colour)/sex/size. As all these are really important and they aren't interchangeable, you end up keeping track of them in this granularity anyway You also have different EANs for them. So, don't try tu use variants, build an item no. generator.

    with best regards

    Jens
  • Miklos_HollenderMiklos_Hollender Member Posts: 1,598
    EANs is a excellent point. (Although barcodes probably have a different name in America.) That is actually my current policy, my standard answer to "Should we make a new item for X?" is nowadays always "Well, is the bar code on the box different?"
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