Variants allow you to manage multiple versions of a product in one place. For example, a jacket that comes in three colors and three sizes has nine variants — one for each combination of color and size. Managing these together allows us to easily reuse shared data using default values.

Instead of entering each variant manually, Lingo generates variants based on options and markets.

Options are often what you your customer would see within a product page – things like Size or Color. Your product type must have a field to represent the attribute you want to use as an option. Each product can optionally select up to 3 fields to be used as options.

We'll follow Aero's Ridgeline Jacket through this article to see how it works. The Ridgeline Jacket uses the Apparel product type which has a Size and Color field. We'll go ahead and select these as options and add the following values:

With these settings we would get 9 variants:

If we were to add another color, we would get 3 additional variants of each size.

Every option is built from a field on the product's product type. If a product doesn't have any variants, you can simply fill in the field. It's only necessary to set it as an option if you want to manage multiple SKUs under the same umbrella product.

To add an option:

If the field you need doesn't exist yet, you can edit the product type to add it. Note that any changes to the product type will affect all products using that type.

Just as they do when entering product data normally, different field types behave differently when used as options.

Select fields as options show the pre-configured list to select from. This is useful when you have a fixed set of options that get reused across products. It can help avoid spelling mistakes or inconsistencies in formatting. An example might include colors, flavors or sizes that you use across many of your products.

Other fields like text or number allow you to input the option values per product. This is great when each product has different options that aren't reused. For example, a graphic tee with orgiinal artwork or flavors that aren't used by other products.

Most of the Ridgeline Jacket's data is identical across all of the variants. Description and material fields can be shared but we'll want different images for each color and a different cuff length for each size. We can easily manage shared default values and overrides in Lingo.

If you filled in the first variant before adding your first option to a product, you will notice that all of the variants inherit the same data. These values form the shared baseline that every variant inherits.

The defaults are shown at the top of each column in the table view. In form view, you will see defaults above the list of variants. Any changes made to defaults will be reflected in all variants that do not have an override for that field.

Any variant can override a Default with its own value. Again with the Ridgeline Jacket, you might leave the description as Defaults but override the product photos on each color so Glacier Teal shows teal shots and Desert Clay shows clay ones. Variants without an override simply show the Default. To remove an override, choose Revert to defaults from the image menu.

Defaults only appear once a product has multiple variants — for a single-SKU product, there are no defaults to manage.

In form view, the variant list can be grouped by Market, by any of the product's options, or not at all, which makes it easier to find the variant you're looking for in a long list.

Every variant has an Availability status to control where it stands in its lifecycle:

Availability is set per variant, so changing one Ridgeline Jacket color doesn't affect the others — there's no cascading between variants.

Setting a variant to Hidden is how you hide a single SKU, like a discontinued size, without removing it from the product. Hidden variants disappear from default views and from anyone just viewing the product, but you can still find and edit them by turning on Show hidden next to the variant selector. If every variant is hidden, select Show variants to bring them back into view.

In table view, you can select multiple variants at once and update their Availability together using the bulk edit bar.