Multiple Stores in one installation sharing one database

[bajanboost]

Greetings All,
I have a friend that has several store branches throughout the world. A franchise to be exact. He wants on e-commerce solution where he can have a shared database of his products, but depending on the country the user/client selects from a drop down menu on the main header, they get a different price per product.

For Example:
Herbal Tea is sold in the USA at $5 a bag, but it is sold in Europe for $6 a bag.


He would like to add countries based on the location of his franchises and then add prices to his products based on the country. Products are automatically shared to every country, but are not added to that country's product list until a price is added.


Is there a solution for this? Is anyone willing to develop such a solution, and if so, what would something like this cost me?

[kuroi]

What you describe is quite doable. Zen Cart's price functions are isolated in a single file. You'd just need to tweak them to read different data from the database based on the criteria that you describe.

Depending upon your client's business processes, I suspect that multiple prices won't actually be the big job. There will probably be more work involved in creating the infrastructure to support adding new branches, locations and price bands and maintaining the pricing data that will be used for each of them.

To get a price for this you should post in the commercial help wanted section of this forum. I would recommend ensuring that you make contact with somebody who has good requirements analysis skills, to avoid nasty surprises later on. This is one of those changes where it will be easy to miss something key and get into an argument about who should have spotted it.

[bajanboost]

What you describe is quite doable. Zen Cart's price functions are isolated in a single file. You'd just need to tweak them to read different data from the database based on the criteria that you describe.

Depending upon your client's business processes, I suspect that multiple prices won't actually be the big job. There will probably be more work involved in creating the infrastructure to support adding new branches, locations and price bands and maintaining the pricing data that will be used for each of them.

To get a price for this you should post in the commercial help wanted section of this forum. I would recommend ensuring that you make contact with somebody who has good requirements analysis skills, to avoid nasty surprises later on. This is one of those changes where it will be easy to miss something key and get into an argument about who should have spotted it.

I know somewhat a bit of programming, so I have a pretty good idea of what needs to be done. However, I don't think it would be very complex, but I just don't have the time or patience to deal with something like this.

The client will have one set of products and brands. They will be shared by ALL the stores. Some stores may or may not carry that a product, but they will surely share the same brands.
The branches in the country will all have the same price, it is the country itself that would have a different price.
The price would be dependent on the country and based on the client's selection of country, a different set of prices will display.

[kuroi]

I know somewhat a bit of programming, so I have a pretty good idea of what needs to be done. However, I don't think it would be very complex, but I just don't have the time or patience to deal with something like this.

LOL. That's exactly my point!

On the surface, the programming for this is relatively straightforward, but overall the problem has rather more dimensions that you have mentioned, which is why you really need somebody with system analysis skills to ensure that you capture all the facets which need addressing.

For example (and there will be others):

1. What price will you display when you don't yet know the customer's location?
2. How will you deal with a customer located within one price band, but who wants to take delivery in a different location?
3. As you will need to amend the database the database to hold multiple prices (and possibly keep doing so each time a new location is added) how will you enter and maintain data for these fields about which Zen Cart knows nothing?
4. Since this is a franchised operation, how will you track sales by branch or franchise?

(These are rhetorical questions - no need to answer them here)

[dogmatic69]

Hi,

I was also thinking of doing something simmilar... Not quiet the same...

I wanna use one database for to different stores. One store for products and one for services. is that posible somehow? any ideas on where one would start

thanks

[kuroi]

2 dogmatic69

Tweaking Zen Cart's code to allow multiple store fronts from the same database is something that several people have done. There is also an add-on mod for this which I believe allows you to specify which categories are used by which store, which would allow you separate products from services.

[dogmatic69]

thanks

will look into that add-on

[craigbailey]

2 dogmatic69

Tweaking Zen Cart's code to allow multiple store fronts from the same database is something that several people have done. There is also an add-on mod for this which I believe allows you to specify which categories are used by which store, which would allow you separate products from services.

i am interested in doing this too.. is this something that a semi novice can do or does it require programming skills??

[gjh42]

Look at the MultiSite Module and decide that for yourself.

[kuroi]

i am interested in doing this too.. is this something that a semi novice can do or does it require programming skills??

Very definitely requires programming skills. The multisite add-in module recommended by gjh42 is fairly well put together and a better option than attempting this yourself.