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Lesson 2.4Variants, and the limits that are not there
Sizes, colours, editions. Simple to add, with three sharp edges worth knowing before you add fifty.
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This lesson prepares you to: Add sizes and colours correctly, and know the three places variants behave differently from what you would expect.
What a variant is
A variant is a version of the same product: a size, a colour, an edition. It carries four things of its own.
| Field | Limit | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Title | 1 to 80 characters | The only required field |
| SKU | 60 characters | Your own reference |
| Price | Optional | Leave empty to inherit the product price |
| Stock | 0 to 1,000,000 | Held separately from the product |
| Sort order | 0 to 9,999 | Lowest first |
Leave the price empty unless it differs
A variant with no price of its own inherits the product's price. That is almost always what you want. Set a price only on the variants that genuinely cost something different, so a later price change on the product still flows to everything else.
The three sharp edges
There is no limit on how many variants you can add. None. You can attach a thousand to one product and nothing will stop you. That is freedom rather than a feature, and a product with a thousand variants will be unusable on a phone.
SKUs are not checked for uniqueness. You can give two variants, or two products, the exact same SKU and Helm will accept both. If your fulfilment depends on SKUs being unique, that discipline has to come from you.
Variants do not appear on browse tiles. A shopper scrolling a category sees the product and its price, not your seventeen colours. Variants load only on the product's own page. Put the important information in the title and the cover image, because that is the whole of your pitch until somebody taps through.
Deleting a variant is permanent
Unlike a product, which is archived when you delete it, a variant is removed outright. If an existing order was placed against that variant, the order keeps its own snapshot of what was bought and the buyer is unaffected, but you lose the record on your side. Prefer setting stock to zero over deleting anything that has ever sold.