Combining Two Products into one (multiple colour issues) from API on wholesaler

[aspian]

Hey I have an issue where the products being imported into shopify are being added with separate colours, which is making thousands of products for each colour. How can I combine these products so that when I update the stock manually, that it also updates the products once merged? My website: aspian.co.uk any help would be much appreciated - this is a real sticking point for me 

[bryan76]

each variant wold normally have a different SKU.   how would you stock the items and know which to send if they have the same product number? 

inventory also works on SKUs.  if you offer red and black each of those has a different spot in the system to load in how many you have.  if there are 20 black but zero red then the inventory of black would be 20 and red would show none so that someone cannot purchase a sold out item.  this is pretty universal across any industry 

[Promer-Alena]

Since your products are coming from a wholesaler API into your Shopify store (aspian.co.uk), the key is to merge those color variants into a single product with options. You can use Shopify’s built-in variant feature by exporting your products as a CSV, consolidating duplicates under one product handle (e.g., "T-shirt" instead of "T-shirt-Red," "T-shirt-Blue"), and listing colors as variants, then re-import the updated file

For stock updates, apps like Stock Sync or Matrixify can help automate inventory management, ensuring manual updates reflect across all variants instantly

[abueler]

Hi there,

We understand the challenge of having thousands of products due to separate colour listings. Our Merges app is designed to address this by automatically combining single Shopify products into a single product with variants. It uses AI to detect the correct variant options from your metadata (like title, description, and tags) and preserves important details such as SKU and barcode.

If you’re managing stock manually, updating your inventory will be seamless. However, if you rely on an external supplier, the update process depends on whether your supplier references products by SKU. If they do, the merged variants will update automatically; if not, a manual resync with your supplier might be required.

Feel free to check out our app here: https://apps.shopify.com/merges. Let us know if you have any further questions or need additional support!

[aspian]

Hey Andreas, 

What an amazing product! What a time saver - quick question on this before I go ahead, I get the impression that once the products are merged they are under your control on your servers. Does this mean that if I were to cancel, that my products would unmerge if that makes sense?  

[abueler]

Hi, thanks for the kind words! Just to clarify, Merges creates standard, native Shopify products with variants—there’s no external code controlling your storefront. This means that if you cancel or uninstall the app, your merged products remain intact in Shopify. Your products will not “unmerge” after cancellation.

[aspian]

Are you able to confirm if this would work on any theme or site or if you have to have certain things in order for this to work? 

[abueler]

Yes! Since Merges doesn’t add any code or apps to your theme or storefront, it works seamlessly with any Shopify theme. Let me know if you have any specific concerns or if there’s anything else I can clarify!

[bryan76]

I need to apologize as I think I misunderstood your question.

You can certainly make the products into one with variants as opposed to separate products.    All the variants would have their own SKUs but you the customer can chose the color, etc. on the product page.

I have done this on a few fulfillment apps and needed to reconnect the Mapping in the app.  Once you remove the products that were imported from them the app is no longer connected to the product listing.  Hopefully that would be easy via the API you are using but not sure.  Just wanted to let you know to keep that in mind when making changes.