We have several options for creating and managing your styles. If you only have a few Styles/Options to your products you may not need this section. However, we have occasionally seen online stores with hundreds, and even THOUSANDS of different styles. If that is your situation, keep on reading. You may click any shortcut for detailed instructions for that shortcut.
There is a default Style Group that we have simply named Style. Although you may use this group as you can any other group, it's main feature is that you may use it as a container to hold all of your styles that may used in multiple Style Groups.
Why would you want to do this? While you may use any style group in as many products as you like. However, suppose you have created a total of 20 Styles. And you have 20 Style Groups. Each one of these Style Groups, for whatever reason, does not use ALL of these styles, but uses perhaps 10 of them. Yet, no 2 Style Groups uses the same 10 Styles.
In this situation, to create all of the Style Groups manually would mean A) creating 20 Style Groups, then B) creating 10 Styles in each group. YIKES! Now you've had to spend your whole weekend creating Styles and Style Groups. BUT! If you create the 20 Styles in the DEFAULT Style Group, after you create each additional Style Group, you will be able to simply select which Styles to place in the NEW Style Group and click an Update button. Now, rather than having to create 20 Groups and 200 individual Styles, you've created 20 Groups and 20 individual Styles. The time savings can be tremendous.
Lastly, when updating a style in the default Style Group, such as changing the name, price, etc., you may also choose to change the variable globally. That is, change the price or other variable in every group that Style is in.
This is also cool. Suppose you have populated your default Style Group like above. But this time each product is available with the same Styles. For example jewelry may be available in Silver, 14k Gold, 18k Gold, Gold Plate and Platinum. Since earrings, rings, bracelets, necklaces, etc. are all different sizes, lengths, etc., even though the types of metal are the same, each will have a different cost. Just Clone the Default Style Group. Now you have a new Style Group containing all of the metals. You simply need to edit the prices. You can do THAT quickly using the "Editing All Styles In A Style Group At Once" shortcut below.
Note that ANY Style Group may be cloned, not just the default Style Group.
If you need to update the prices or weights, etc., such as after cloning a Group in the example above, or simply because of a price increase, you may do so on a single screen and update the entire Group, rather than editing one style at a time for an eternity.