[ic] Creating a sub shop

[Gur]

Friday, April 23, 2004, 4:06:12 AM, wrote:

Jamie Neil> Hi All,

Jamie Neil> I've been given the problem of integrating a new supplier into an
Jamie Neil> existing IC5 store, but they (the supplier)
Jamie Neil> have laid down some rather 
Jamie Neil> strict (and odd) ground rules which include:

Jamie Neil> 1) We are not allowed to display the price of
Jamie Neil> their products anywhere in 
Jamie Neil> the store apart from the basket and checkout.
Jamie Neil> So in order to see how 
Jamie Neil> much something is then a customer must add
Jamie Neil> the item to their basket.

Solution: Add an if-else statement on the flypage/search results to
not show the price their. something along the lines of,
[if-item-data products vendor=='XYZ']
            add item to cart to see Price
[else]
      [item-price]
[/else]
[/if-item-data]

(check for logic/syntax. also you will need to have a column in your
DB that stores the Vendor name)

Jamie Neil> 2) We are not allowed to display their
Jamie Neil> products next to products from 
Jamie Neil> other manufacturers.

Most of the projects are setup with the hierarchy of,

     STORE > PRODUCT GROUP > CATEGORY > PRODUCT

You could either give this vendor a "STORE", "PRODUCT GROUP", or
"CATEGORY" depending on your exact requirements/catalog setup.

You would have to change the code for category display/search a little
bit in the appropriate categories to prevent similar items from
showing up together, depending on how you set it up.

The only problem you will run into is when customers use the search
box to find items from this vendor. But if you are thinking about
going the sub-store route you could setup a "STORE" using the
hierarchy that I use and put an option to search X store, Y STORE ...
and use a custom results page for this search box.

Jamie Neil> I've tried telling them (and the store
Jamie Neil> owners) that they are crazy, but 
Jamie Neil> the supplier is sticking to their line and
Jamie Neil> won't budge an inch. They 
Jamie Neil> haven't been able to do this in the US for
Jamie Neil> various reasons (I supect 
Jamie Neil> legal ones), so this is for EU markets only.

BUY.com used to do this in the States they still might on certain Palm & Sony
items.

Jamie Neil> The problem is that this supplier is _very_ prestigious and it's
Jamie Neil> considered worthwhile to jump through any
Jamie Neil> number of hoops just to be 
Jamie Neil> able to sell their stuff.

Jamie Neil> My current plan is this:

Jamie Neil> 1) Create a "sub shop" dedicated to their products - 
Jamie Neil> http://domain.com/supplier/

Jamie Neil> 2) Create a separate table for holding their products.

Jamie Neil> 3) Limit _all_ searches in the rest of the
Jamie Neil> store (IC and SQL) to using 
Jamie Neil> the main products table only. I'm using
Jamie Neil> action maps for a lot of IC 
Jamie Neil> searches at the moment so I'm hoping this should be fairly easy.

Jamie Neil> 4) Limit searches in the sub shop to using the new product table.

Jamie Neil> 5) Make components intelligent enough to know
Jamie Neil> which bit of the store 
Jamie Neil> they are being displayed in and use the
Jamie Neil> correct products table.

Jamie Neil> Can anyone shoot any holes in this plan or
Jamie Neil> suggest a better approach?

-- 
Best regards,
 Gur                            mailto:gurs at sbcglobal.net