Why are some Oberlo product variants missing from my imports?

[ahjma]

Hey Shopify family,

Sorry for the trouble, I have a couple questions that I would really appreciate getting help with. I have imported a product from AliExpress using Oberlo (both extension and URL) but only 2/3 of the variants appeared. On AliExpress, the supplier/product shows that there is plenty of inventory. Is there a way around this?

Additionally, if I import a product with a certain Oberlo SKU and it goes out of stock, would I able to replace it with a different product with a different SKU? How would that affect fulfillment? 

Thank you for your time! Hope everyone's shops are going swimmingly 🙂

[Sophia]

Hi, @ahjma.

Sophia here from Shopify. Welcome to the Shopify Community!

As long as all variants were selected on your Oberlo Import List, they should have imported to Shopify regardless of inventory quantity. The Shopify admin would just show 0 for a variant's inventory if it were out of stock. Are you able to share a link to the product from AliExpress? Let me know which variants were missing as well so I can troubleshoot it with my test store.

If something goes out of stock, you can absolutely replace it with a product from another supplier by using the Override feature in Oberlo. This is an extra step during the fulfillment process if a variant went out of stock after a customer placed an order. If instead of replacing one variant for an order, you're replacing an entire product, fulfillment shouldn't be affected if there are no open/unfulfilled orders for that product. You can also try the Override feature for the variants that didn't import. Let me know how that goes! 

[ahjma]

Hey Sophia,

Thank you so much for getting back to me! Oddly enough, I tried adding the product to my Oberlo import list and all variants showed up! But I still really appreciate you taking the time to help out! 

As for the override stuff, is it possible to override a single variant or two (the ones out of stock) of a specific product with a different supplier's stock/SKU?

Thanks again Sophia! I hope you are having a great weekend 🙂

[Sophia]

It's great to hear that all of the variants for that product showed up! Let me know if you run into any other issues with it and I'd be happy to take a closer look.

You should be able to replace a variant during the fulfillment process. For example, if a variant went out of stock after a customer completed their purchase, you can replace it with the same product from a different supplier when you're fulfilling the order. This wouldn't change the supplier on your store, but rather would just choose a different supplier for this one order.

If you need to replace a variant or two on your store, you can try the Variant Mapping feature. This one's new to me and I haven't tried it myself yet, but it will allow you to connect up to 5 different products.

I hope you have a great weekend too!