CSV Import Question - How to upload multiple variants, with multiple choices, with multiple pictures

[PatricksDesigns]

Hello all,

I am stuck trying to master the importing of products via CSV, I have a very large store that I am trying to fill.

The store I am working with has some products with 3 option variable families (multiple choices for each of those three in the option1/2/3 columns), but all are in the same product family and should have the same handle. Then on top of that, each of the variant SKUs have several pictures unique to that product

The option variables are Finish, Crystal Type, and Crystal Color

In the case of this product, there are 20 different endpoint product variants under the one handle once you have the different finishes with the different types of crystal and the different types of colors of the crystal.

So my vision/hope is to have all of the product variants on one page/handle with three drop-down toggle boxes letting people filter to their variant option, then the pictures update for that variant option. I have done this before on a Magento website.

So in the import I am trying to upload the 5 images tied to each variant also in the same upload, which I have done to some degree and had it work.

I am definitely doing something pretty complex here, and I have done a bunch of homework, but I can't get it to work.

Thanks in advance for your suggestions!

Tony

When uploading via CSV the email report always says:

Failed:

• Line 2-101: The variant 'White / Bronze Pearl / Pbz' already exists. Please change at least one option value.

Attached is a screenshot of what I have; there are bunch more import columns, including the status column active to the right, there is no other data in any of the other columns, other than active

 

[eloiseweightman]

If you use an app like Matrixify - you can put all of the lunks in the Image Scr, and seperate them with ;

The way the file reads looks like you are trying to create a new variant, when really you just want multiple images for the one variant. Hope that helps 🙂

[PatricksDesigns]

Thanks for the reply! I was trying anything I could to try to get it to both take the product but also take the extra images. I may have just gotten myself too lost in this from too much trying. What should the format be to just add more images to a given variant?

[eloiseweightman]

This should be how the image links should be. Based off your screen shot, those 10 lines should only be 2 lines with 5 image links in the Image src cell

[simon-skrod]

Hi @PatricksDesigns ,
You can't achieve that.
Shopify support multiple images per product, but each variant may have only 1.

Meaning if you have product with 10 variants and each of them has variant specific image, you will end up with having product which has 10 images and each image will have link to attached variants. Attaching couple sreenshots, hope this will let you image how shopify works.

[PatricksDesigns]

Simonas thank you so much for the thoughtful answer! The only other past store I have built that was comparable was a Magento store where you would make a primary listing for a product family, load all of the pictures into that, then have the children/variants tied to that product and I think also could have only one specific image tied to it.  Guess I am trying to figure out if that is possible in Shopify by a upload.

[simon-skrod]

@PatricksDesigns, no that's not possible by default, nor by API nor by products upload, simply because product variant doesn't have such ability to be linked to more than one image.
Basically shopify assume that product has galery of images and each variant may have single image which is usually used when switch variants on PDP or displaying it on cart page in order to identify selected variant.
There may be some workarounds, you can try to take a look at shopify store, but those solutions should store images outside of shopify and override shopify product page galery and variants matrix in order to display those images, also management process would be outside of shopify admin as well. In general such feature would be quite complex and it would consume quite a lot resources, so it should be quite expensive.

I am shopify app developer which is focused on products on-boarding processes on shopify. So You can contact me in case you have any other product on-boarding questions.
Good luck building your store!

[PatricksDesigns]

Thanks again Simonas! I think I am getting close