Copy raw materials from one product to another

When you have multiple Shopify products that use the same raw materials, you can save time by copying the raw materials from one product to another. This feature allows you to match variants between products and automatically copy the raw materials from the source product to the target product.

Example scenario

Let’s say you have a store that sells t-shirts printed on demand. Many of these t-shirts will have the same product options and each variant using the same combination of options use the same raw materials.

Instead of using Material Manager to assign the same raw materials to each products' variants one at a time, you can use the “copy” feature to quickly copy the raw materials from the variants of one product to another.

In this scenario we will copy from a source product to two target products. The products are configured as follows:

Dinosaur T-shirt (source product)

Options:

• Sizes: Small, Medium, Large
• Colors: Red, Blue, Green
• Styles: Crew neck, V-neck

Variants:

• Small / Red / Crew neck
• Small / Blue / Crew neck
• Small / Green / Crew neck
• Small / Red / V-neck
• Small / Blue / V-neck
• Small / Green / V-neck
• Medium / Red / Crew neck
• Etc…

Alien T-shirt (target product)

Options:

• Sizes: Large
• Colors: Red, Blue
• Styles: Crew neck

Variants:

• Large / Red / Crew neck
• Large / Blue / Crew neck

Unicorn T-shirt (target product)

Options:

• Sizes: Small
• Colors: Blue, Pink
• Styles: V-neck

Variants:

• Small / Blue / V-neck
• Small / Pink / V-neck

Lets assume the source product (Dinosaur T-shirt) already has all the appropriate raw materials assigned to its variants (see our quick start guide for more information).

If you then start the copy process using the Dinosaur T-shirt as the source product and the Alien and Unicorn T-shirts as the target products, the app will automatically match the variants between the products and copy the raw materials from the source to the targets. The raw materials will only be copied if all of the variant options match.

Alien T-shirt result

Both of the variants options are a 100% match with two of Dinosaur T-shirt variants. Both of the variants will have the appropriate raw materials copied.

Unicorn T-shirt result

The variant “Small / Blue / V-neck” has a match with the Dinosaur T-shirt variants. The raw materials will be copied to this variant.

The variant “Small / Pink / V-neck” does not match any of the Dinosaur T-shirt variants. It will not have any new raw materials added to it during the copy operation.

How to

Click on the “Copy materials” link in the left navigation to go to the copy page. Click on “Select source product” and select the product with the raw materials you wish to use as the copy source. Then click on “Select target products” and select up to 50 products you wish to copy the raw materials to.

Once all the products are selected click on “Start copy”. This will bring you to a screen that will show the status of the copy process. The copy process may take a while depending on how many variants the products being copied have.