Products & variants
Everything you sell is an item — a product with a name, a price, and a status that controls whether it's available to your storefront catalog. An item can carry variants (sizes, colors, editions) that each have their own SKU and price. You manage all of it under Catalog → Items in the admin.
Use Prepare your first product for sale for the checks before you start taking orders.
Add a product
From Catalog → Items, choose New Item. For an ordinary retail product, explicitly choose Type → Sale — the form starts as Rental. Keep Status → Draft while you prepare the product, then fill in the essentials:
| Field | What it does |
|---|---|
| Name | The product's display name, everywhere. |
| Slug | Used in product links and generated from the name. Changing it can break existing storefront links. |
| Type | Choose Sale for an ordinary retail product. Rental and Service are different product types. |
| Status | Draft keeps it out of the public catalog while you work. Active makes it eligible for your storefront catalog. |
| Base price ($) | The selling price for a product without variants. The form starts at $0; enter and check your intended price. |
| Base compare-at price ($) | Optional "was" price shown struck-through. It must be higher than the base price — for a scheduled promotion, use a sale window instead. |
You can also set Brand, Vendor, Product Family, and Tags — optional organization fields your storefront and search can use.
Choose Create Item to open the product's page, where you can add variants and images. Later changes to the product details use Save Changes. Add photos through Images → Add images; see Media & images for primary images, alt text, and image order.
Write the descriptions
There are two description fields, used in different places:
- Short Description — the one-liner on product cards and listings.
- Description — the full body copy on the product page itself.
A variant can carry its own description that replaces the main one when a customer selects it — useful when a colorway or edition genuinely reads differently. Set it in the variant's editor; if a variant doesn't have one, the product description shows.
Variants
Decide whether customers need choices such as size or color before entering opening stock. Add each choice from the product page with New variant:
| Field | Notes |
|---|---|
| Name | e.g. "Granite" or "Large". |
| SKU | Your stock code. Must be unique among the variants of this product — a duplicate is rejected with an error. |
| Price ($) | Enter this variant's selling price explicitly. It does not inherit the base price; leaving it blank saves $0. |
| Compare-at price ($) | Optional "was" price for this variant. It must be higher than the variant's price. |
| Options | Label/value pairs like Color: Granite or Size: 38L, shown with the variant. |
| Featured image | Pick which product image shows when this variant is selected. If you don't pick one, the product's primary image is used. |
Choose Save, then check the variant's saved price. Changing the product's Base price ($) does not update its variants' prices.
Variants can be archived and restored independently of the product, and reordered with the up/down arrows — the order here is the order customers see. (Reordering works on the non-archived list; switch off Show archived to move things.)
For a Sale product with variants, customers must select a live variant. Archiving every variant does not switch it back to selling without variants.
Add opening stock
New Sale products and variants start with Available stock of 0. For a product without variants, stock the product row. For a product with variants, stock each live variant you intend to sell — adding variants does not transfer existing product stock to them. Follow Enter opening stock before taking orders.
Extra details with metafields
Metafields are free-form label/value pairs for anything the standard
fields don't cover — warranty length, ingredients, edition numbers. They're
available on both products and variants, and your storefront can display
them. When a value reads as a whole number, decimal, true/false, or JSON, the
editor tags it with a small type badge — plain text gets no badge. Keys
starting with __ are system-managed; leave those alone.
Publish, archive, restore
- Keep the product Draft while you prepare it. When ready, set Status → Active and choose Save Changes. Active makes it eligible for the storefront catalog; check your storefront to confirm its placement, selected variant, price, and stock. Active alone does not make it buyable.
- Archive removes an item from the public catalog without deleting anything — sales history and content stay intact.
- Restore puts the item back at the status it had when you archived it — an Active product becomes eligible for the storefront catalog again. Check its variants, stock, and storefront placement before selling it. (If that prior status isn't recorded, it comes back as a Draft to re-publish.)
Reordering products
The up/down arrows on Catalog → Items set the order your storefront lists products. Reordering needs the complete list on screen, so the arrows are hidden whenever the view is a partial set — clear any search, the status filter, and the include-archived toggle first. They also stay hidden for very large catalogs (above 200 products), where the list is paginated and no single screen holds the whole set.
Who can do this
Owners and Admins can create and edit products. Staff can be granted the same with the Catalog permission group — once granted, the New Item button and the product editor unlock for them. Staff without the group see these screens read-only. See Team & permissions.
Entering opening stock is a separate action: Staff also need the Inventory permission group to adjust stock, or help from someone who has that access.
Related
- Collections & pages — group products and add content pages
- Media & images — product photos, alt text, and image order
- Stock levels & adjustments — track inventory per variant