eCommerce - multiple stock values

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Hi there, I'm wondering if there is a answer to my problem...

I want to sell t-shirts and I have a 3 designs on offer.

Each design will be available in 'mens style' - small, med & large and 'womens style' small, med & large.

When I get my initial stock in, I will have 50 of each design, style & size (900 t-shirts in total)

In eCommerce, I am making 2 product per design - 1 mens & 1 womens, with dropdown 'customer choice' menu for size (s, m & l) so each will have a total of 150 in stock...

But... (and here's the question...) how can I make the system keep track of stock levels for each size and not just the total?

I don't really want to have a seperate product to deal with each design, style and size... there must be a simpler way to deal with this that I am missing. If you can point me in the right direction, I'd be very grateful.

Cheers

rc255
 
mnakalay replied on at Permalink Best Answer Reply
mnakalay
Hello,
You have 2 options to do that both requiring an additional add-on:
- Product multi inventory costs $20 and you can find it herehttp://www.concrete5.org/marketplace/addons/product-multi-inventory...
- A free add-on developed and offered by Mesuva. Get the code herehttp://www.mesuva.com.au/blog/concrete5/improved-stock-level-contro...
And I stringly suggest you read the explanation on their blog herehttp://www.mesuva.com.au/blog/concrete5/improved-stock-level-contro...

Remember that the first one will be supported and updated while the second most likely won't. Other than that, it's really a matter functionality (and personal taste)
rc255 replied on at Permalink Reply
rc255
This is brilliant - thank you. I shall read up on this and implement my decision :)
mesuva replied on at Permalink Reply
mesuva
If you do use my package, although it's obviously free on github, I'm still quite happy to help where I can and respond to feedback/bugs.
goldhat replied on at Permalink Reply
Interesting package there Mesuva it's a bit off-topic here but I wonder if you've done any changes before to how quantity pricing works or displays? Because when I tried it on a site with multiple size bags of granola, I found it didn't work too well because it sort of "added" the price of options rather than displaying the full price as you might see on Shopify for example. For t-shirts I think that probably works okay because they are similar prices. But what if you have a food item, one bag is 250 grams, the other is 750 grams. Big difference in price, we can't say 750 grams is (+ $9) we want to say the full price such as $12.
mesuva replied on at Permalink Reply
mesuva
I think this comes down to how you view the purpose of product options and perhaps when you decide that the option for a product is distinct enough to warrant creating a separate product.

I try to look at the product options as being for cases where it's changing something more like a size, colour or other variable that doesn't really change it's value as such, or, for cases where you are including or excluding something WITH the main product (e.g. include a cable with a printer or selecting a bigger hard drive for a computer).

So for cases where it's a physical quantity of the product changing, the question is whether if it's really an attribute of the product, or have you actually got two different products to sell. A big 20kg sack of granola is going to be quite a different product from a 500gram bag, where'd you likely have different product images and text for it, but it gets tricky when you're going from 250grams to 750grams - really everything is the same apart from the quantity... so having two separate products isn't desirable.

Then on the other hand, for something like a foodstuff, the actual quantity of the product is something you'd expect to see in the title of the product itself '250gram Bag of Granola', whereas for a clothing size it's more of a note on the product selection.

I do agree though it would be nice if you could have an attribute that _directly_ modified the price, not just add or delete from it as an adjustment. To answer you question, I have played around with wording around product attributes and in the cart, but I haven't done anything as yet to do with directly changing the price.

Might be something I'll investigate when it's not beer drinking weather.
goldhat replied on at Permalink Reply
Thanks for the reply, good points.