# Merging Products & Creating Variants
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### When to Merge Products
Merging makes sense when you have:
* **Different vintages** of the same wine (e.g., 2019, 2020, 2021 Cabernet Sauvignon)
* **Different bottle sizes** of the same wine (e.g., 375ml, 750ml, 1.5L)
* **Both** — multiple vintages in multiple sizes
Each variant maintains its own SKU, price, inventory, and compliance data, but they share a single product page on your storefront.
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### How to Merge Products in CrushSuite
1. Open the **CrushSuite app** in your Shopify Admin.
2. Navigate to **Products**.
3. Click the **Merge Products** button.
#### Step 1: Add Product Details
Enter the **title** and **description** for the merged product. This is what customers will see on the storefront — make it describe the wine broadly (e.g., "Estate Cabernet Sauvignon" rather than "2021 Estate Cabernet Sauvignon 750ml").
#### Step 2: Define Options
1. Click **"Add options like size or color"**.
2. Give the option a name that makes sense for your products:
* For vintages: name the option **"Vintage"** and add values like "2019", "2020", "2021"
* For sizes: name the option **"Size"** and add values like "375ml", "750ml", "1.5L"
3. You can add a second option if you need both (vintage + size), creating a matrix of variants.
#### Step 3: Map Products to Variants
Select the existing product from your catalog that corresponds to each variant. CrushSuite links the original product's SKU, pricing, inventory, and compliance data to the new variant.
#### Step 4: Complete the Merge
Click **Merge Products**. CrushSuite creates a new Shopify product with the variants you defined.
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### After Merging
#### Verify in Shopify
After merging, open your Shopify Admin and navigate to the new product. Confirm that:
* All variants appear with correct names
* Pricing is correct for each variant
* Inventory counts are accurate
* The product page displays as expected on your storefront
#### Compliance Data
Each variant retains the compliance data (ABV, volume, varietal, vintage) from its original source product. Since different vintages or sizes may have different compliance characteristics (a 1.5L bottle generates a different alcohol fee than a 750ml), this per-variant data is important.
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### Important Notes
* **Merging creates a new Shopify product.** The original individual products may be archived or remain as separate listings depending on your preference.
* **Vinoshipper users:** If the source products came from Vinoshipper, the merged product's variants maintain their sync relationship. Future syncs update each variant independently.
* **Unmerging is manual.** If you need to separate variants back into individual products, you'll need to recreate them in Shopify.
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### Creating Variants Without Merging
If you want to add variants to an existing product (rather than merging separate products together), you can do this directly in Shopify's product editor. This is standard Shopify functionality — CrushSuite doesn't require any special steps for manually created variants, as long as each variant has the appropriate compliance data.
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