Structuring a catalogue with thousands of variants

The situation

A saree wholesaler in Surat has about 3,000 designs. Most come in four to six colours. Some are sold with an unstitched blouse piece, some with a stitched blouse in standard sizes, and some in sets of six or twelve for retailers. Today the catalogue lives in an Excel sheet that two people edit, plus photos in folders named by the photographer. Stock is counted in the godown and updated by phone.

The owner wants an online store for retailers and some direct buyers. The first instinct is to upload the spreadsheet as it is. That usually produces a store where the same saree appears six times in search, filters do not work, and stock goes wrong because one colour is tracked in two places. A day spent on structure saves months of clean-up.

Step one: decide what a product is

A product is the thing a buyer compares and chooses. A variant is a version of that product that differs on one or two attributes, shares most of its description, and is chosen from a dropdown or a swatch.

The test is simple. If a buyer would want to see the options side by side on one page, they are variants. If each option has its own story, its own photos and its own price logic, it is probably its own product.

Applying the test to sarees

• Colour: often a variant, because buyers compare colours of one design. But if each colourway has its own set of photos and sells to a different audience, separate products can work better. Pick one rule and apply it to the whole catalogue.
• Blouse option (unstitched, or stitched in a size): a variant.
• Pack of six or twelve for retailers: usually a variant with its own price and stock, or a separate wholesale product if retailers see a different catalogue altogether.
• Fabric: almost always a product level attribute. A georgette and a silk version of one design are different products.

Step two: fix the attributes and their values

Attributes are the named properties, such as colour, size, fabric and work. Values are what each attribute can be, such as maroon, 38 or zari.

Write a short list of attributes and their allowed values before you import anything. Messy values break filters. If one row says "Maroon", another "maroon", and a third "Mrn", the store will treat them as three colours.

Rules that help

• One spelling per value, agreed in writing. Choose "Off white" and drop "Off-white", "Offwhite" and "Cream".
• Keep the number of variant attributes per product to two, at most three. Colour and blouse size together are fine. Colour, size, pack and border width together become hundreds of combinations nobody can manage.
• Put descriptive facts that buyers do not choose between (fabric, length, wash care, work type) in product attributes or the description.

Step three: design SKU codes people can read

Each variant needs its own SKU code, because stock is counted per variant. A good code tells a person in the godown what they are holding without opening the computer.

A common pattern is design number, then colour code, then option. For example SR-4127-MRN-UN for design 4127 in maroon with an unstitched blouse, and SR-4127-MRN-38 for the same design with a size 38 stitched blouse. Keep codes short, uppercase, with no spaces, and never reuse a code for a different item.

Step four: categories and tags

Categories are the main shelves of the store: sarees by fabric, by occasion, by price band. Keep the tree shallow, two or three levels at most, and put each product in the one category where a buyer would look first.

Tags handle everything else: festival collections, new arrivals, slow movers you want to clear. Tags are cheap to add and remove, so use them for anything temporary.

Step five: images

Name image files by SKU or design number before upload, so they can be matched automatically. Give each variant at least one image showing that variant. A buyer who picks maroon and still sees the green photo will either message you or leave.

How this sits on ShopenUp

On ShopenUp, unlimited product listings, variants with attributes such as size and colour, categories and tags, and inventory tracking per variant work from day one. The Growth plan covers up to 5,000 products; larger catalogues go on Enterprise.

Two things are often needed for a catalogue like the Surat one, and both are built or integrated for you by Code Colonies. The first is a bulk import that reads your existing spreadsheet format and maps it to products and variants, so your team keeps working in Excel during the change. The second, if you sell to retailers at different rates, is a B2B price list or dealer portal. We built one on ShopenUp for a Gujarat FMCG distributor, with dealer price lists and schemes, as a custom project.

Advanced filtering beyond the basics is also custom work. Plan for it if your buyers expect to filter by six or seven attributes at once.

Limits

No platform fixes a catalogue whose source data is inconsistent. If three people spell colours three ways in the spreadsheet, that has to be cleaned before import, and it is tedious work that someone in your team has to own. We can write checks that flag problems, but deciding that "Rani" and "Magenta" are the same colour for your buyers is your call.

Stock accuracy also depends on the godown. The store tracks what it is told. If returns are put back on the shelf without being entered, the online count drifts, and no software catches that on its own.

Finally, restructuring after launch is possible but expensive. Changing a product from six separate listings into one product with six variants changes its address and its reviews, which affects search. Get it right before the first import.

Checklist

• One written rule for what is a product and what is a variant.
• Two variant attributes per product, three at most.
• Attribute values listed with one agreed spelling each.
• SKU code pattern agreed and applied to every variant.
• Category tree no deeper than three levels.
• Tags reserved for temporary groupings.
• Image files named by SKU or design number.
• Spreadsheet cleaned and checked before import.
• A person in the godown responsible for entering stock changes the same day.

To see what the catalogue tools on ShopenUp handle on day one, read catalogue and inventory.