Teapplix Variation Model

Variations group a list of products that have similar fields. The only change among the products are changes in one or several properties, like "size" and "color" or "pattern".

Root vs Variation
Normally, each Teapplix ActionShip "product" is a standalone product. Once you change it to "Variation Root", you can add "variations" as child products for it.

Inheritance of Properties
Variation must has its own "SKU" and UPC / EAN. Any other property, if you do not specify on the variation, it is inherited from the "Root" product when Actionship upload the listing.

Main Image
Each variation's main image is used. If not specified, root product main image is used for that specific variation.

Additional Images
You can attach "additional images" on the root product. These additional images can be used in 2 ways:

    1. You can use the additional image as a "patch" for variation attribute. For example, a "color=red" variation attribute can be linked to a specific "root" additional image. Currently, this information only used by Walmart
    2. Any additional image not used in the fashion above, will just upload as one extra additional image for all the child products of this root product

Additional images on the "variation" child, will always upload as additional images.

This is best illustrated by an example, let's say we have the following product variation group:

root:
additional image: red square, blue square, green square, picture 1, picture 2

variation 1
attribute: color="red", use above "red square" image
additional image: picture 3

variation 2
attribute: color="blue", use above "blue square" image

variation 3
attribute: color="green", use above "green square" image
additional image: picture 4

with this model, once uploaded to marketplace, the products will look like this:

variation 1: main image + picture 1 + picture 2 + picture 3
variation 2: main image + picture 1 + picture 2
variation 3: main image + picture 1 + picture 2 + picture 4

For platforms that support "color patch", there will be a standalone "selector" that will consist of "red square" "blue square" "green square" to select different variations. For other platforms, these images are automatically skipped.