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Stone & Water
Use Case

Create and generate Shopware 6 variants

Generate Shopware variants without creating each combination by hand: properties such as size, colour and material turn into complete variant sets in seconds, with your own patterns for SKU and variant name.

3 min readFor Shopware 6.6 and 6.7

What the PIM does here
  • Variants are built straight from the property selection, with a live preview of the combinations before creation.
  • SKU and variant name each follow their own pattern with variables such as master article number, counter and option values.
  • The variant matrix maintains prices and stock across all variants in one table.
  • Deletion checks for orders; when duplicating, inheritance is chosen per field.
Variant generator in PIM for Shopware: choosing colours and sizes to create nine combinations
9 variantsfrom 3 colours and 3 sizes
How it looks in the PIM
  1. Open the product from the list
  2. Choose properties such as colour and size
  3. The button shows the number of combinations up front
  4. Every variant gets its own product number
Ideal for
Fashion in colours and sizesFurniture in material and sizeSpare parts in versionsLaunching new collections
Watch the video 

Creating variants in the Shopware standard means clicking through property lists and fixing article numbers by hand afterwards. With four sizes, five colours and two materials that is 40 variants, and 40 chances for a typo. The PIM plugin's variant generator builds these combinations straight from the property selection, with a live preview before anything is created.

Selecting properties to generate Shopware variants

  • Unified search across property groups and options at once, one search field instead of two separate lists
  • Grouped selection of all properties with their values, for example "colour  red/blue/green"
  • Live preview of the resulting combinations before anything is written
  • Missing translations are marked and can be added right in the dialog, without leaving the Shopware property catalogue

Patterns for SKU and name

SKU and variant name each follow their own pattern, both opening as accordions. Available variables are {parentNumber}, {firstVariantNumber}, {parentName}, {options}, {option1} to {option3}, {group1}, {group2} and {counter}. {parentNumber}-{option1}-{option2} becomes SHIRT-RED-XL without anyone retyping. Default patterns can be stored in the config matrix so that every maintainer uses the same system.

Variant matrix for prices and stock

Once created, the variant matrix is ready: a table across all variants where prices and stock can be entered directly, without opening each variant. Tier prices can be bound to the base price so they follow a later price change at a fixed percentage.

Keep inheritance in mind: variants inherit name, description, price, cover image, manufacturer, categories and properties from the master product, but only as long as they carry no own value. The PIM resolves this inheritance correctly in completeness and filters and highlights deviations in colour.

Set the variant order in Shopware per product

In the PIM you set the order per product: with "Group order" you decide whether the product page shows colour first and then size or the other way round, and in the variant overview you sort the variants with arrows. The preselection keeps its position, and the shop cache for the product and all variants is cleared right away. Details are in the guide to the variant order.

Safe deletion

Variants can be removed together in bulk edit, including an order check: with the recommended scope "Only without orders", variants that appear in orders are skipped and counted as protected in the preview. When duplicating a variant product, a dialog asks up front which fields the new variants should inherit, images, name, price, weight and EAN, and tier prices are copied along.

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Customer review

“We work with several thousand articles in Shopware every day and the PIM has simplified our product maintenance enormously. It is particularly practical that many changes can be made in one place.”

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What's next

The full description is in the variant generator documentation. How to maintain the generated variants in bulk afterwards is shown on bulk edit Shopware products.