Advantage of Matrix vs Standard items

Sosa,

Every fashion boutique client we have setup we insist they get a third party addon to handle there Matrix items. There are three that I know of: Matrix Plus by

Fashion Bundle by Matrix Master by

The reason, with RMS you can not predefine a dimension i.e. Size S, M, L, XL... and Color Black, White, Red... you have to continually add them every time you create a new Matrix. Also adding to an existing Matrix is not easy as well. Anyone of these tools will make your life a lot easier.

If you don't want to spend the extra money from one of these great tools then I would suggest you look at the New Item Wizard in SO Manager for creating your Matrix not adding them one by one.

Rob

Hi Rob, Thanks for your interest. I think you miss my point. I do not have a problem creating the Matrix, nor entering the sizes or colors everytime I create a new matrix item. In any case, let me know if I misunderstood the basic concept of the Matrix Items.

1.- Matrix Items are not items perse in the sense that they do not directly have quantities nor prices, etc. 2.- Once a Matrix its defined, only then I can add Standard Items into it. (Items that have previously been enter to the database.) 3.- Matrix Items its sort of a way to group Standard Items.

Considering the above statements are accurate, the only usefull advantage of using Matrix Items I can think of at this moment, its to see how a particular Item (Matrix) its doing. for example a report that includes my best selling items. A task near imposible to do without grouping items that only differ in size and color (since they will all be consider as the same item).

Now, on to my point. If a Standard Item can be setup to have "sub description 1" as color, and "sub description 2" as size (using the caption function). then what its the advantage of having to go through the extra steps to add them into a Matrix. (other thann the one I mentioned above).

Thanks in advance

Valentin

"Rob" wrote:

Sosa,

1.- Matrix Items are not items perse in the sense that they do not directly have quantities nor prices, etc. This is correct, they are a container item that hold all the specific items of a given style together.

2.- Once a Matrix its defined, only then I can add Standard Items into it. (Items that have previously been enter to the database.) No, this is the place that I believe is causing you to rethink how your are entering your items. Because you are creating each individual items separately and then creating the Matrix and adding all of the items that belong to that Matrix after. This is a long and tedious task and this is where either using the built in New Item Wizard or one of the previous mentioned addons comes in very very handy. Take for example a 3 dimensional pair of Jeans that has: Style Number: ABC123 Waist Size: 28, 30, 32, 34, 36 Length: 30, 32, 34 Color: Black and Stone Wash To create this item you would need to create 30 individual items and then the Matrix item and then add all 30 of those items to the matrix. Even if you are using the Copy function to create each item it would take you at a minimum of 15 minutes to finish this one style. Now multiply that by 20 styles and you have just spent 5 hours entering in items. Now I can create this one style using the Matrix Plus from RMS Store in less than >>2 MINUTES Hi Rob,

Hi Rob,

Again thanks, you have very elocuently cleared me up on how a matrix works and specially how it should be setup. In any case, it seems that I have work my way backwards, since I already have entered all of my items (standard items). I will check out the wizard tomorrow at the store. But if I follow you correctly, the Matrix Item wizard will also create the standard items contained in it. That seems logical. What about the item lookup code? will it still be needed to go back and change that manually? or the wizard ask for them..

After I try the wizard, then evaluate the addons, Thanks

Valentin

"Rob" wrote:

Hey Rob..

Tried the wizard today and is BEAUTIFULL!!! ALthough, I worked the Item entries BACKWARDS, The Wizrads is helping me assign the previously created standard items to the new matrix item

THANKS!!!!!!!

Valent> Hi Rob,

Hey Rob, very interesting post.

We have a similar situation at our store. Not sure if I can create a matrix for a certain cluster of skirts, get all the combinations between the various attrbutes and then delete the items that we don't have in our inventory and will never going to get. This would make it cleaner I guess. The price could be different for each of the shirts.

What's unclear to me in your explanation: if your matrix is already

3-dimensional (waist size, length, color) then why do you use an addon to add sizes and colors? This is done by RMS itself, is that not right?

Thank you! Adrian

"Rob" wrote:

Yes but EVERY time you create a new matrix item you have to manually type in each of your dimensions. i.e. Item ABC123 Sizes S, M, L Color Red, Black, Blue

-- and -- Item ABC321 Sizes S, M, L Color Red, Black, Blue When you create item ABC123 you have to enter the sizes and colors for the item. Then when you create ABC321 you again have to enter the sizes and color for this item. You may say well it only takes me a couple of minutes to enter that information each time, but when you add up those couple of minutes each and every single time you create a new matrix, you see where I am going. I understand you are a small boutique but your time is money as well and you will find that you are going to spend a lot of time re-entering the same dimensions over and over again. With any one of those 3rd party matrix tools you can also selectively remove certain items from the matrix before the items are created. You can also modify certain aspects of each item before they are created i.e. Pricing. Then on the odd occasion if you ever need to add an item to a Matrix you can quickly do so in less than a minute. RMS even though you can create matrix items it is not natively well suited to managing matrix items. But with one of the 3rd party tools it greatly enhances RMS's abilities.

Rob

I seem to remember that you can modify the price of each item in a matrix beofre the items are created. And if I delete the ones I don't need after creating them but prior to any transaction affecting the matrix, then I guess I should not have any problems.

The worst case scenario with later adding items to an existing matrix would probably be adding that via straight SQL.

Would the above be accurate? And related - is there a data model that I can use to understand how everything is related in terms of tables/attributes/foreign and primary keys etc ...

Thanks, your > Yes but EVERY time you create a new matrix item you have to manually type in

You are probably right, it's been a while since I looked at how RMS creates Matrices using the New Item Wizard.

I think the biggest issue is continually typing in the Dimensions attributes every time you create a new matrix.

Contact some of those third party addon suppliers and see if you can get a demo. I think you will be happy with the added capabilities.

Rob