Bundles, Variants, and Inventory - Oh My!

[AnnaRocks]

I started out on Squarespace only to discover that the platform could not accommodate my wishes, nor did it offer a suitable workaround. So, here I am (where I probably should have been, in the first place). At least now (I think) I know exactly what I want.

I sell cake-in-a-jar.

You can buy a 2-pack, 4-pack, or 6-pack. I'm ok with creating 3 products, each with six options (I googled; there's an add-on that will allow for more than 250 variants.)
However - although you can manage inventory with variants, is that something I'd have to do manually?
So, I'd have to go through all the variants for the 2-pack to remove chocolate, go through all the variants for the 4-pack to remove chocolate, go through all the variants for the 6-pack to remove chocolate   1. that's manual; I've already established I'd have over 250 variants and 2. I'd have to put the chocolate variant back in.
Unless I am understanding inventory & variants, I don't think that's gonna work for me.

Squarespace offered me the option of have my 2-pack, 4-pack, or 6-pack products then adding a Custom Product Form to each. That would work - a form with 2, 4, or 6 dropdowns with the flavors listed, but that won't account for inventory.
If I have 5 chocolates left, I need chocolate to be removed from your 6th selection.
If you buy the last 5 chocolates, I need chocolate remove from all the options for the other products.
Squarespace can't manage inventory from options.

I am NOT selling individual jar flavors. You can't buy just 1 jar. Not doing it.
I'm not putting a note on my website, "minimum purchase 2 jars" nor am I putting up a red flag notice when you add just 1 jar to your cart and try to go to checkout. All of those are bad customer experiences; not doing that.

Bundles might work (if Shopify offers that) if I can have ONLY bundles as my products, have my flavors as products (for inventory purposes) but not make each individual flavor available to 'add to cart' - if that makes sense.

I am open to other ideas for how to accomplish my objective. Thank you all in advance.

[BundleSync]

Hi

You could try using bundle apps but depends on what kind of user experience you are looking for. If you need the buyer to be able to add different flavours to make up say a 6 pack then a theme based bundle app would be required. They will add the individual lines and apply a discount to the pack at checkout.

Our Bundleup app offers a backend driven option instead whereby you define your premade bundle in our app and we manage inventory level based on component stock. If a component goes out of stock the bundle also shows no stock. The buyer only sees a single order line in checkout.

What you could do is set up variations as your pack sizes with an option for flavor.

• Option 1 - Pack size 
• Option 2 - Flavor

You then bundle each variation with the components in our app. There are 2 main functions of our app:

1. Inventory Management

Our app lets you connect up products to correct SKUs and we then update their inventory based on the component stock level. So in your example you would bundle the 2, 4 and 6 packs with the "Single" SKU. When the Single variant goes down in stock your packs will also adjust accordingly.

2. Order Fulfilment

When you sell one of the variations the master stock level won't reduce automatically. What our app does is update the order post purchase by replacing the order line with the Single SKU as order line which then reduces that stock. This then feeds into point 1 above where it updates all linked variants.

If you need help in setting up and testing please get in touch. You can also find our guide here:

https://help.channelup.com.au/hc/en-us/articles/900004620086

Regards

Tom

[BundleKit]

Hi @AnnaRocks 

This is Jun from Bundle Kit. 

Our app is able to meet your needs as it is primarily a bundle inventory management system so it will also be able to track the SKUs for variants of each product.

The bundle inventory is automatically set based on the available inventories of the bundle item(s), including the inventories of the variants. This won't be a manual process for you. 

You can create bundles using our app. We have step-by-step instructions here: https://help.bundlekit.io/creating-a-multi-pack-bundle

Let us know if you have any questions. 

[ohadsc]

Hey @AnnaRocks!

Ohad here, from Zoorix. 

Just in case you are still looking for a solution here, I think that Zoorix might be able to answer your requirements. Zoorix supports multiple offer types including volume discounts, regular bundles, mix & match bundles, and more tools that can help you sell more. You may have a look at what the app has to offer on our website - https://www.zoorix.com/features, and also on our demo store - https://zoorix-store.myshopify.com.

I hope this helps and don't hesitate to reach out if you have any questions or need assistance.

Cheers!

Ohad