Business Context: We operate a Shopify store with a single product line that has 400 variants. We sell across multiple channels (B2B, Shopify Collective, Online Store, and POS), but each channel requires access to different subsets of variants:
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B2B catalog: All 400 variants, all products
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POS: All 400 variants, all products
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Online Store: 21 specific variants, all products
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Shopify Collective: 4 specific variants, 26 products
Current Problem: Shopify only allows product-level publishing to sales channels, not variant-level control. This forces us to duplicate the same product multiple times (one version with 400 variants, one with 21, one with 4) to achieve channel-specific variant visibility.
Business Impact:
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Inventory synchronization failures: Our MRP system cannot properly sync inventory levels because it sees duplicate SKUs across multiple products, causing stock count discrepancies and overselling/underselling risks
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Data integrity issues: Keeping pricing, descriptions, images, and product details synchronized across duplicates requires constant manual effort
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Operational inefficiency: Managing what should be one product as 3-4 separate products creates unnecessary administrative overhead
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Reporting fragmentation: Sales analytics and product performance data is split across duplicate products, making accurate reporting nearly impossible
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Increased error rate: Every update must be replicated across duplicates, multiplying the chance of mistakes
Requested Feature: Add the ability to select which specific variants of a product are published to each sales channel, similar to how we can currently select which products are published to channels.
Expected Outcome: One master product with all 400 variants, with granular control to show only relevant variants per channel. This would allow proper inventory synchronization with external systems and eliminate duplicate product management.