Setting up Categories/Products

I have been playing around with ZC for about a week now. Basically trying to figure out how the system works. (Fantastic by the way.) Let me apologize in advance, I am sure there has to be an answer for my question somewhere in this vast forum, but I simply cannot find it.

I sell sport items. I have several product types such as hats, jerseys, banners etc…and I carry items for MLB, NFL etc… Now here is my situation, lets look at just the NFL line for instance.

The NFL has 32 teams and I carry hats, jerseys, banners, for each of them. Now my first dilemma is what is the best way to set up my categories.

I want my customers to be able to view items/sub-categories by team, however I would also like them to have the ability to search by the type of product, say hats which displays hats from all the teams.

I am sure I can do this by setting up separate hat/jersey/banner categories at the same level as the team categories, and also create the categories below the team level and place products in both, but 1) I do not necessarily want the team categories and the hat categories showing together, and 2) consider 32 teams with say 20 (hats, jerseys, etc.)> I think I would have a nightmare on my hands maintaining that. (NFL is not all I carry)

Does anyone have any suggestions?

The only thing I could think off would be to do the following. However, it seems that there would be a better way to handle something like this

NFL>>Search by Team
…….Team A
………….Hats
………….Jerseys
…….Team B
………….Hats
………….Jerseys
…….Team C
………….Hats
………….Jerseys
NFL>>Search by Product Type
………….Hats
………….Jerseys
………….Banners
………….Clocks
………….etc.

and then list/copy my individual products in more than one category.

Thank you in advance for you suggestions, I am just stumped.

You might try using the manufacturer listing for teama instead of mfg's and see if this gets you close to what you want. You could then select the team and all products for that team would be sorted.

Products in cats/subcats would be entered as normal; hats in hats etc. but no team cats as this would be sorted by the team(psudeo mfg)

Or if the team name is part of the item description the normal search will sort team listings out also and not cats for teams again.

This seems like a great way for me to solve a similar problem, except in my case I'd like to be able to assign the same product to multiple 'manufacturers'. Is there a way to manipulate the system handle that?

For background: I have products searched by type (desks, chairs, tables), and I also want them to be searchable by the room they'd be used it (classroom, cafeteria, etc.). The issue is that the same product could belong in multiple rooms.

Thanks,
Paul

PRSWeb:

all items are searchable via the search function. The default is 'and'

To search is not a problem...in the product description just include that proper text

i.e. These work Great in the classroom, cafeteria, or other locations.

try adding this to one or more items. and try the search out.

The manufacturers class is just another tag or method of classifying stock one could omit and include the mfg name in the product description and acheive basically the same result when searched.