I have found this Commerce manual: Product Attributes & Variations, which explains the differences and connections between fields, attributes and variations, where in the end they assign a different product to each product display.
The situation I am in is as follows. Let's say I sell lunchboxes. The same model is available in 5 colors and the lid is always white. But now I want to add an option to the shop where people can order a lid in the same color as the lunchbox. My SKU's are as follows:
- lunchbox_red
- lunchbox_blue
- lunchbox_...
I was hoping this could become a simple product attribute (a checkbox?), but it seems I will have to add a second version of my 5 products with the extra costs of the lid:
- lunchbox_red
- lunchbox_red_lid_red
- lunchbox_blue
- lunchbox_blue_lid_blue
- lunchbox_...
I initially wanted to let people choose the color of the lid, but that would require me to maintain 25 different products for each box-lid combination!?
- lunchbox_red
- lunchbox_red_lid_red
- lunchbox_red_lid_blue
- lunchbox_red_lid_...
- lunchbox_blue
- lunchbox_blue_lid_red
- lunchbox_blue_lid_blue
- lunchbox_...
Since I don't really care about the photo (I would definitely need a product for each lid combination in that case), I was hoping for a smarter way to implement this.
Can I add a general attribute (with added costs) to all product variations without adding all the products? The price for the coloring of the lid will be a fixed price, not depending on the color used.