The need for Kitting items to create a product

[Twbeebe]

The scenario: I have just installed 'Stock by Attribute' and it is seeming to work fine the first time. Where the Matrix is compounding out of control is; I have a graphic + that can be printed on one of three colors of t-shirts + with the t-shirt sizes range from small to 6XL.. I currently have the 'Graphic' hosting the two additional Attributes with their sizes hosting the quantity counts. But now what I am seeing is the need to have ONE inventory count of the t-shirts in their various colors and their various sizes that the graphic would be printed on, vs. allocating 3 shirts in each size, times each color, times each of the 170 graphics that I have just in my 'Humorous' section.

Thus the idea of kitting.. a customer choses the graphic, wants it printed on a grey, xlarge t-shirt. The master inventory count for the t-shirts says we have that combination in stock... the 'Graphic is pressed on to the T-Shirt' and is shipped as a completed product.

I would not be selling my graphics seperately, but will be selling the t-shirts seperately. ( If you want 6 pistachio greens, I'm not going to argue, I can get replacement Next Day ).

As always, thanks in advance. I do have a local coffee roaster in town.. where do you want the coffee shipped to ?

[kuroi]

Let's take a step back. What do you have that's limited and therefore needs stock information available to customers? It doesn't sound like the underlying shirts, as you can get replacements within 24 hours. Nor does it sound like the graphics as you print them to order (or am I misunderstanding your manufacturing process?).

[Twbeebe]

Let's take a step back. What do you have that's limited and therefore needs stock information available to customers? It doesn't sound like the underlying shirts, as you can get replacements within 24 hours. Nor does it sound like the graphics as you print them to order (or am I misunderstanding your manufacturing process?).

Thank you for responding. If I were to have a 'Bucket' of 2 dozen, White, Large T-Shirts, of which I manufacture 4 design processes, as well as, sell plain ones, I need to have an accurate inventory. My website either needs to say that there will be a minor delay in shipping, or block all other sales until I get replenishment stock. I use QBI, for accounting & eventually for reordering purposes. It's not that I cannot get replacements fast enough, but in everyone's magic empire, the Buyer needs to know when the plain t-shirt sales have dropped the stock levels to the reorder point, so that the graphic sales don't go on hold until new inventory arrives ? Ultimately, you don't want to order everyday, because even my suppliers have minimum quantities to get the price breaks. As I see, there is no way to draw from one centralized source ( the Bucket of T-Shirts ) to be able to sell 5 different product items ? I could, out of the 24 shirts, allocate 4 shirts to each product line, balance to the plain t-shirt sales line, but if one is selliing more than another, I don't want to hang-up potential sales, when I have shirts, elesewhere, with the shirts being allocated to the wrong process. Make sense ?

[kuroi]

This question and variants of it crop up regularly in various guises.

Your store could be structured 1) as selling a T-shirt with the design as an attribute, but then Zen Cart would demand that you assign stock to every combinaton of size, color and graphic, which would be tedious, ineffective and give false out of stock messages.

Or your store could be structured 2) as primarily selling graphics with size and color as product attributes, but then you would have to spread the stock of each bucket across all graphics, which would again be tedious, ineffective and give false out of stock messages.

To make 1) work you would need to be able to disable the inclusion of your graphic attribute from stock calculations.

To make 2) work you would need to be able to map each product to a separate inventory list for each of your buckets and read back the results in real-time.

Unfortunately Zen Cart doesn't support either of these options at this time.

However, the future looks better. There's been some drag in respect of developing inventory management options because it was known that stock by attributes would be integrated into the core Zen Cart code for the next release. So some developers (including us - Kuroi Web Design) we relunctant to put effort into developing functionality likely to have a very short shelf-life.

So once the next major release of Zen Cart comes out, I suspect that there will be fresh impetus to develop add-ons that do 1), and we already have a prototype of 2) developed recently for a client who didn't need the whole solution.

[Twbeebe]

Again, thank you for responding Kuroi.. In case # 1, having the t-shirt be the stock item would keep the totals of THAT physical inventory in line, except that, if you used the attribute to control the size, then the attribute does not have any quantity control, for inventory purposes ? So to remedy that, each shirt, each size, each color would have to be a buyable item ? Then the Graphic attribute could be a pull down with an added cost for the attribute ?

Attributing the size, with it's varying upgrade pricing has not been an issue as far as ZenCart is concerned. But, to have any form of 'pickable' attribute for 160 Humorous designs would/could be horrific to control ? Just to make it worse, I have just met a New Graphic Artist who can bring in several Hundred new designs, and I think that in general, all would sell.

Maybe it would be better to just sell the art work transfers seperately and sell the t-shirts at regular price ? To get the Limited Lifetime Warranty that we are offering, we would press it here for free or for a fee ? That could be an attribute pull down for Installed/Not Installed fee ? ( Labor Costs have to be thought out ). If the choice for 'Not Installed' was used, then a statement would have to be triggered voiding the LLG. Actually a radio button that has the disclaimer next to the choice could be sufficient ? How long can the text be in an attribute ? I'll test it.

The transfers are NOT something that the average user can apply. It requires 380 degrees, for 8 seconds, all at once. A common houshold iron can not deal with the heat and any slippage of the transfer because of the moving iron and both will be ruined.

A disclaimer statement that says the transfers can be sold & shipped seperately, but voids all expressed or implied warranties due to application hardships, and must be applied by us, to maintain our Limited Lifetime Guarantee ? Just thinking out loud.

If you need a guinea pig, I can help ? I'll run up a second copy to try it with ? I only have 30 colors of t-shirts and not all transfers will work with all colors. In my 'testing of the waters' I have found that I can assign specific color attributes to a specific stock items, which would keep the consumer from choosing a wrong color that would not work on the transfer being purchased.

In trying to solve this problem, I recently added a mod, 'Stock by Attribute'. which I now see, was written by you. Even in that mod, I still think, that it does not allow for items to be collectively counted, when they are the same product/item number ?

Thanks in advance for any feedback or ideas.

[kuroi]

That mod not written by me

I don't even like it. But I did pick it up, dust it off, clean it up, and maintain it for a rather longer than I would have liked and my earlier response was taking that into account when I said that neither option is currently supported by Zen Cart.

Personally, for your type of shop I would recommend option 2 above. But I'm afraid we have no plans to take the work done for our client further on the current version of Zen Cart, or even, at this time, to separate it out from the rest of the changes.

We do expect however, to revisit this for the next major release of Zen Cart.

[Twbeebe]

Hello.. Above all else, honesty is the best policy. I wonder what Microsoft uses for their matrix ? Their Retail Management Software will create the matrix, or so I was promised, but then again, I never bought it to challenge the theory of use. My poor sales rep has been hanging in with me for over a year now, maybe I'll throw the scenario at him and see if it can handle the situation ? Zencart was the 1st cart that was offered to me by Network Solutions, the backbone of the Internet initially. I found it easy for me to adapt to the jest of theories and have been successfull at everything I've installed to date. I have just hit this dead end, and I know in the few month's that I have been gearing up, I've seen others in the same dilema. I've just never accepted dead ends as an answer. Even with Microsoft products, I tamed Vista's Ultimate. I'll let you know what I discover. Actually, I even have a Timed Demo of RMS.. maybe I can run it up and play with the matrix issue ?

[kauthon]

So was there ever a solution to the kitting problem.
If there was please reply. I am looking for a solution right now.