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Understanding Parent and Child Products​

Parent and child products are foundational in managing product variations.

A parent product serves as the base, and the child products represent the various configurations created from the parent. This allows you to efficiently manage a catalog where child products inherit characteristics, but can still have unique features such as price and SKU.

Parent ProductChild Product
The parent product contains common attributes such as name, description, images, and general product information that apply across all its variations. This centralized data helps reduce redundancy by allowing child products to inherit shared attributes, ensuring consistency across product configurations.Each child product inherits attributes from its parent but can have unique features, such as different pricing, SKUs, or specific option combinations (e.g., different sizes, colors, or materials), allowing for precise customization and inventory management for each variation.
tip
  • Using variations reduces redundancy by centralizing shared attributes at the parent level.
  • These also enable precise management of individual products within a variation, allowing for custom pricing, inventory tracking, and more.
Use Case 1: Cosmetics BrandA cosmetics retailer offers lipsticks with multiple variations such as shade (Nude, Red, Pink) and finish (Matte, Glossy). The parent product, “Lipstick,” contains shared attributes like description and images, while child products represent each possible combination of shade and finish, each with its own price and SKU.
Use Case 2: Furniture ManufacturerA furniture manufacturer offers a sofa where that comes in two different fabric types (leather, linen) and two sofa sizes (two-seater, three-seater). The parent product is the “sofa,” while the child products represent the various configurations of options based on the variations of fabric and size. The fabric variation can also be re-used and applied to a different product (a chair for example) with the same, or added options.