Location based SKUs for electronic products

[LucyTSOMT]

I can't be the only one having this problem but for some reason can't seem to find anything on the subject. I'm looking for a bit of advice and possibly best practice suggestions for selling electronic products globally. How do you go about selecting the correct SKU of a product based on the customer's location? For context: the product we are selling requires a power cable, which will be different depending on the country that the customer is ordering from.

So a customer ordering from the US would receive SKU1-A

And a customer ordering from the UK would receive SKU1-B

But both would place their order from the same store and same product page.

I don't want to have to create different variations of the product for the customer to choose the correct cable as this would get very messy and confusing, considering we already have different variations of the product for style choices and I don't want to have to create multiple Shopify stores or product pages. 

What suggestions do you have for solving this problem? Does a solu

[PaulNewton]

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@LucyTSOMT wrote:

I don't want to have to create different variations of the product for the customer to choose the correct cable as this would get very messy and confusing, considering we already have different variations of the product for style choices and I don't want to have to create multiple Shopify stores or product pages. 

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There's what we want,  and what works in the here and now.

Shopify has no concept of multiple skus per item, nor most platforms, services, software or systems. Shopify isn't even realy single-sku centric /shrug.

Make sure to submit a feature request to a shopify support advisor.

And lots of businesses run different domains|stores for different regions even on shopify when the markets feature can fill all the needs.

So multiple variants/products is the only sane way currently to have SKUS sanely exposed throughout out a business either in it's shopify store/admin or it's off-shopify processes.

For the frontend, online-sales channel theme, to avoid messiness and confusing customers you'd customize the theme to provide the right context.

Example alternative to show why insisting on not having different variations creates fragile business processes:  Use metafields and some advanced theme customizations to show the proper sku to the customer and in the order as order attributes... but that will only go so far as the online-sales channel theme and not really work for multichannel.. nor work for backend processes like fulfillment.

So for backend processes you would still consume the original sku property on the variant that went through the order unless you also setup automations to edit orders and attach the variant with the proper skus BUT that means that variant with the proper sku already exists so why have these hoops at all.

[ellegiers]

Although it's been some time since your query was posted and Paul Newton kindly responded, it seems the issue still persists. I'm facing a similar challenge and am exploring a potential solution involving Shopify Markets coupled with a bundle app. My approach would be to create two separate SKUs in the backend – one for the main product and another for the power cord. A bundle app could then be utilized to assemble the appropriate configurations for each country, all under the same product name. Shopify Markets would then display the correct version based on the visitor's location. This method hinges on the specifics of your logistics setup, but it might be a viable solution. Has anyone tried a similar approach or can offer insights on its feasibility?