How to eliminate variants in general and make each product unique?

[MineralMan]

I sell products that have the same name (Title and Handle) but all are unique products (I sell minerals and the name of a mineral is unique, but not each specimen as all are different in size, weight, origin, price, etc). All items with the title and or handle are grouped under one product. I want only unique products. Now a week busy with the helpdesk, but none of their suggestions work. I attached a CSV file with the very few first lines. Adamite is a nice example. All 5 show as one product with 5  variants on the website (crystals2collect.com) . How would you solve this?

[KAS040 · Accepted solution]

Hey MineralMan!

It sounds like you're dealing with a frustrating problem where all your mineral products with the same name are getting grouped together as variants, instead of being shown as separate products. No worries, there's a way to fix that!

How to Make Each Product Unique in Shopify

1. Create Unique Handles Shopify uses the "Handle" as a unique identifier for each product, so if your handles are the same, it'll group them together. To solve this, you need to make each handle unique by adding something extra to each product name, like a number, weight, or origin.

   For example, instead of having:

   • "Adamite" as the title and handle for five products,

   You could use:

   • "Adamite - Specimen 1"
   • "Adamite - Specimen 2", and so on.

2. Adjust Your CSV Import In your CSV file, you'll want to make sure each "Handle" is unique for each product by adding some kind of identifier. You could tweak the Title column to make sure every product name is a little different, and then the Handle column can be automatically generated from that unique title.

   • For instance, add something like "Title" with extra identifiers.
   • Make sure the Handle field has something unique, maybe an ID or characteristic added to the name.

3. Check Product Settings in Shopify After importing the updated CSV, double-check in Shopify that each mineral appears as its own separate product. You can do this by going to the product list and making sure they're not grouped as variants anymore.

4. Use Bulk Editing Apps If you've got loads of products, doing this manually could take forever. So, using a bulk product editing app could save you a lot of hassle. Apps like Bulk Product Editor or Matrixify let you make quick changes to handles and titles in bulk.

5. Shopify API Option If you're comfortable with coding, you could use Shopify's API to automate the updates, adding unique details to each Handle. This could be a script that adds unique identifiers to every product title.

6. Theme Solutions Using 'Siblings' Some themes have built-in support to handle products with the same title by using a 'siblings' feature. This allows products with similar handles to be shown independently instead of being grouped. Switching to a theme with this feature might be a quicker way to solve the problem.

7. Upcoming Shopify Update in 2025 There's also an update coming in 2025 that should make it easier to handle products with the same names without all of them being grouped as variants. If you can wait, this update might provide a more straightforward solution, but in the meantime, following the above steps can help you get everything set up correctly.

Following these steps should help you get each of your mineral products to show up as individual items, instead of all being grouped together as variants. If you need more help, like specific code examples or tips on using a Shopify app, just let me know!

[MineralMan]

Hi Kas, Thank you. You solved the problem in minutes, waiting for Shopify over a week. Still no solution. 
Yes, minerals are complex and none of the templates really offers a solution. Some minerals have not one, but several kinds of minerals present. There are no options for that, and customers cannot search for the other ones. I only can write in the body, there are different minerals present. 

Another issue, and even more a problem, is that on the product page the SKU is not available. I learned this can be coded (I added a code in the "main-product.liquid" as per directions of the chatbot and solutions offered in the community, but that does not work. I solved this on the side of the customer, to appoint a variant. The SKU is important to identify all items (with an equal name. A number is unique, names are not). Now close to 700, but in the future this could be 4,000.

Thanks again and it is a pleasure to run into a real specialist.

Matthew

[MineralMan]

Hi Kas, here some screenshots of a shop should look like. As you can see, there are four tabs. All details collectors are looking for, before deciding to buy. Shopify offers three variants. Is there a way to code this? KR,  Matthew

[KAS040]

Hi Matthew,

You can solve this without coding I guess, You can the custom fields for this.
If you like, please send me an DM.

Gr Kas