Splitting sections of the store

[RenegadeCreativ]

Im pretty new to shopify and I have a question, that I am not sure if it is even possible to do.

Basically, my store will offer retail items i.e finished products that people can buy, and also products that people can buy to make items with. (basically a retail and a supplier shop) and I want to have a 'craft supply' section which will offer blanks and other products for other crafters to buy and keep it separate from the 'retail' shop side. is it possible to do this? so have a shop button and that shows the retail items, and a supply button which shows the blank items.

any help appreciated.

[Ash]

Hey, @RenegadeCreativ!

Welcome to the Shopify Community! My name's Ash and I work at Shopify. 

What you've described in your post is absolutely possible to some extent! It sounds like you have two main categories of products; finished products, and supply products. Depending if these two main categories have sub-categories underneath them, the solution will have a slight variance. Additionally, since each Shopify account can only have one online store, it's important to note that while we can separate where the different products live on your site, they will all still share the same cart and checkout. Let's go into each situation in a bit more detail.

1. If all of your products fall into either the finished product or supply product categories and there will be no sub-categories, then you can simply make a collection for each product type and fill them with the respective products. Once your collections are created, you can feature them on your navigation bar in the header, or depending on your theme have home page sections that lead to each collection. 
2. If you plan on having sub-categories within your finished product and supply product categories, the process is similar but with a couple more steps. You'll still need to create collections for your products, but in this case you would make a collection for each sub-category. Once all of your collections are created, you can follow this tutorial on featuring a subset of collections on a page. This tutorial will guide you through making a page for finished products which displays all of the different categories of finished products, and do the same for your supply products. 

Let me know what you think about the above ideas by replying here. If I've missed the mark on what you're aiming to achieve, please provide some more details on your end goal and I'll be happy to continue brainstorming ideas with you!