Variants

Variants are the concrete versions of a product, such as size and color. In Shopify, each variant has its own SKU, price and inventory.

In Shopify, a product consists of up to three options (e.g. size, color, material) whose combinations form the variants. Each variant is an independently sellable unit with its own SKU, price, inventory, weight and, ideally, its own image. Since Shopify raised the variant limits, even large matrices with up to 2,048 variants per product can be modeled.

The modeling question matters more than it looks: what is a variant of the same product, and what is a separate product? Rule of thumb: variants represent genuine purchase decisions within one product (size, color). Different models or product lines are separate products. Otherwise search, filters, feeds and SEO all suffer.

Cleanly modeled variants are the prerequisite for working inventory logic, marketplace feeds and ERP synchronization. In migrations from systems with different variant logic (Magento's configurable products, for instance), variant mapping is one of the critical design decisions.

Shopify development

Related terms

SKU
The SKU (stock keeping unit) is the unique article number of a product variant and the central key for inventory, ERP, fulfillment and reporting.
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Metafields
Metafields are custom data fields in Shopify that extend products, variants, collections and other objects with structured additional information.
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Collection
A collection in Shopify is a group of products: a category like 'Sneakers' or a curated selection like 'Bestsellers'. Collections form the category pages of your store.
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