Inventory Module Product Catalog

Product Catalog

A 'Product Catalog' is a list containing every product a company wants to sell, along with any information that helps identify said product (e.g., name, color, description, and product code).

A company can have one or more Product Catalogs. Each Product Catalog type has a corresponding workflow called 'Product Catalog Workflow', which is used to orchestrate products. Workflows can be configured and customized to add bespoke business logic.

Next, let's learn about the 'entities' related to the Product Catalog.

Product Catalog Entities:

Standard Product

The standard product entity can represent:

• A sellable non-variant product
• A non-sellable base for a variant product 
• A sellable or non-sellable component of a group product

Variant Product

Typically represents the sellable item, or SKU, and holds additional attributes for variation of a base product, such as size, color, volume, etc. 

Group Product

An entity to model bundle products. Bundle products are a parent product to a number of standard and/or variant products.

Categories and sub-categories

Products can be associated with categories and sub-categories.

A sellable non-variant:

A custom jewellery manufacturer sells once-off products with unique settings and stone options.

Base product / Variant product:

An outdoor adventure and sporting retailer stocks tents for alpine skiing.

In this example, the 'Two-Person Alpine Spirit Tent' is available in blue, purple, and green (Variant Products).  The 'Two-Person Alpine Spirit Tent' (Base Product) is stored as a Standard Product.

Category and Sub-category:

In this example, the retailer has organized the tents into categories > sub-categories 

e.g., Hiking and Camping > Tents

Group Products:

Another option is for the retailer to group related products together.

How do you know when to use Standard vs. Variant vs. Group?

Every use case is different and depends on how the retailers model their data in their own source systems. During discovery workshops, the retailer's model is compared against Fluent's model and adjustments will be made accordingly.

The most common scenarios involve 'Standard' and 'Variant' relationships or 'variant only.' 

Currently, the reference workflows provided by the inventory module calculate ATS and reserve inventory based on Variant Products.

Product Catalog Data Model