Color attribute - setting up swatches

I'm setting up a store where most of the product pages will display a color selection. I have experimented with Option names, values, etc and understand how to set them up using Attributes Controller. However, this store has a few unique challenges.

Issue 1
For instance, lets say one product offered is a work shirt. This store offers work shirts from 5 different manufacturers. And each manufacturer has its own specific color selection, as well as its own specific names for each color. So I can't just set up ONE option name called COLOR for all manufacturers. I figure that I will need to create specific option names for each manufacturer - eg., MANUFACTURER1 COLOR, MANUFACTURER2 COLOR, etc., and then add values to each of them. Then in Controller, I can select which manufacturer's set of colors I want to use.

Before I go ahead and do this, I just want to run this by you to ask if this is the most efficient way to set this up. This store will end up having 40 manufacturers and several thousand products, so I need to make sure I streamline the process up front before I start adding products.

Any thoughts on this?

Issue 2
When I add a color swatch to an option value, it automatically displays the swatch on the product page. When I add a second swatch, it displays it below the first one - in other words, it displays them vertically. Problem is that I could end up offering 25 color selections on the page, and that would make for a weird looking page if they are stacked vertically. What file do I edit to format the swatches differently? eg horizontally.

Vito

I can help with Issue 2....

Go to admin>catalog>option name and under the option you want to display horizontally click edit. Where it says this (NOTE: Rows, Display Size and Max Length are for Text Attributes Only:) look for this (Attribute Images per Row:) and change the number to how ever many you want to display horizontally.

Thank you suzzylou. :)

Vito