Creating Variant Products using Simple Products in Bulk

If you ever need to create a lot of variations at once or you just find excel easier to work in you can use the StoreFeeder Product Import to create your variation products.

We have a guide on using the product import/export feature here.

This guide covers how to use the Update Existing product import to turn existing simple products into variations of a new parent product. 

There are example excel documents attached that include the bare minimum required columns so you can see the formatting required of the file. You can add more columns if required.

Prerequisites

• The simple products you want to use as variations must already exist in StoreFeeder before you run the import. The parent is resolved by SKU lookup at import time — if the parent doesn't exist, the import will error.
• Each simple product must have a unique SKU.
• The product you're designating as the parent must not itself be a variation (i.e. it cannot already have a parent product).

Step 1 — Create the Parent Product First

If the parent product doesn't already exist, you need to create it before importing the variations. You can do this manually in the UI, or create it using another import and using the Create New option on the import. 

The parent product is just a regular product with its own SKU. It doesn't need price or stock — it's a container for the variants.

Step 2 — Prepare Your Import File

Create a CSV (or XLSX) with the following columns:

Any other standard product fields (Name, Price, Inventory, etc.) are optional — they'll update the child product if included.

Example

SKU,           ParentSKU, VariationAttribute-Colour, VariationAttribute-Size
SHIRT-BLUE-M,  SHIRT,     Blue,                      Medium
SHIRT-BLUE-L,  SHIRT,     Blue,                      Large
SHIRT-RED-M,   SHIRT,     Red,                       Medium

In this example, SHIRT is the parent (must already exist), and the three SHIRT-* products are existing simple products being converted to variations.

Step 3 — Run the Import

1. Go to Products > Import/Export
2. Select Update Existing as the import type
3. Upload your file and map the columns:
   • Map SKU → SKU
   • Map ParentSKU → Parent SKU
   • Map each VariationAttribute-X column → the corresponding variation attribute
4. Run the import

Variation Attributes

• If the attribute value (e.g. "Blue") doesn't already exist in StoreFeeder, it will be created automatically.
• You can have multiple variation attributes per product (e.g. both Colour and Size).
• Every child row must include at least one variation attribute value — rows with a ParentSKU but no attribute values will fail with: "Variant products must include at least one Variation Attribute."

Common Errors