We have a large number of products on Shopify that have all been added as individual items and now we’re trying to amalgamate them so everything that is the same but with a different variant is listed under one product.
Currently I am going through our products and adding the variants manually. eg. adding the variant size and then adding the values. Doing this manually for each product is taking a very long time and I’m wondering if there is an easier way to go about this
@GwenG 
things can get tricky depending on the business logic.
For manually use CSV export/import https://help.shopify.com/en/manual/products/import-export/using-csv as one way.
That moves the problem to manually made excel or google-sheets formulas workflows.
The matrixify app can join / group products https://matrixify.app/tutorials/shopify-group-products-into-products-with-variants/
For custom scenarios needing automation , especially ones that will have to frequently repeated , you can script product creation using an app like mechanic though there is no off the shelf solution.
https://tasks.mechanic.dev/?q=create%20variant
One tip for most situation is to pretag all the existing products “original”, “old” etc etc so when new products are created it’s easier to filter and tell the duplicates apart that are now possibly obsolete. In turn tag new products “new” etc depending on workflow need.
Or maybe research the app store for apps that can join products, or variants, or product-options.
If you need this workflow or automation built for you then contact me by my email for services.
Contact info in forum signature.
ALWAYS please provide context, examples: store url, theme name, post url(s) , or any further detail in ALL correspondence.
Good Hunting.
Hey @GwenG
Shopify allows you to import and export products using CSV files. This can be a powerful way to manage product variants in bulk. Ensure you follow the correct format which you can learn here.
Otherwise, there are several apps available in the Shopify App Store that can help you manage product variants more efficiently. Some popular ones include:
Hi @GwenG !
Ieva here from Matrixify. Thank you @PaulNewton for the mention!
Matrixify is able to group Products into Products with Variants and the process of doing so it quite straight forwards. We can definitely help you with this if you do choose to use Matrixify for the task!
Please feel free to reach out to our support, we’d be happy to help!
Hi @GwenG ,
Like others have mentioned one option is to use the native Shopify CSV import/export to create additional variants. If you do try this out I’d recommend starting with a test product because it’s easy to accidentally duplicate or overwrite product information and it can be difficult to see what changes were made.
Another option is to use our Ablestar Bulk Product Editor app to quickly add variants with a few clicks. Here’s a quick clip showing how you’d add some more combinations to an existing product (but you can do the same to multiple products at once):
When you add the variants you’ll see the progress of the job and you can also revert the changes with one click if you need to. Finally, for more control you can also use spreadsheets to add the variants in the app with the same one-click undo if needed.
I hope this is helpful, if you have any other questions please let me know.
Best,
Daniel