Sets: A New Product Type

The standard Magento product types allow for customers to configure and add multiple products to their cart at once, these are called bundled products. However, Magento doesn’t allow you to include a bundled product inside another bundle product. It also doesn’t allow a bundled product to have a finite inventory amount based off the child products in the bundle.

To get around this, and deal with complex inventory tracking needs, we developed a new product type called a Set. A Set includes a number of products inside it (similar to a bundle) and can be added to a standard Bundled product in Magento. A Set’s inventory is based off the mix of Simple products associated to it – each Simple product can have a parent “ratio.” You can think of it like building a kit — the number of kits you have in inventory is the maximum number of kits you can put together based on the underlying parts.

On the frontend this allows the customer to configure their product, while getting correct pricing and inventory, on a single page. Take a look at this Boss Performance Suspension System. The main product page here is the bundled product, while options like “Vehicle Model Options – KDSS or Non-KDSS” are actually sets with a number of products inside them. Further down the “Add Aftermarket Upper Control Arms” option shows simple products with an additional fee.

All of this allows ToyTec to sell a product which includes over 20 different SKUs and hundreds of configurations on a single page!

Custom Features