I most definitely support this as a Needed Upgrade. Same/Similar issue colors/styles of products come and go. I don’t want to delete the variants, just put them in the draft for a little while
It is indeed a great use case, and we see that frequently with seasonal catalogs. Shopify does not support draft status for the variant level at this time,’ it added, only at the product level, so everything inside a product must comply with the same visibility rules.
A practical solution is to use an app or metafield setup where variants are conditionally hidden on the storefront via theme logic (liquid), rather than deleting them. You can also manage availability by inventory location or custom tags and hide them by filtering in the theme so you can keep them active for reporting/ERP sync, yet invisible to customers.
For ERP configs like yours, metafield based visibility is generally the safest way to prevent breaking sync logics.
Shopify recently has released feature that allows publishing / unpublishing of product variants (Product Variant Publishing - Shopify Changelog).
You can unpublish a product variant from online store sales channel, if you don’t want customers to see it on the online store.
In the variant list in the product detail page (Shopify Admin), click on the publishing icon, and uncheck the “Online store” channel :
After saving, the variant will not be visible / available on the online store, visitors will not be able to see it / purchase it.