Setting Up Product Families
Design product families that give every product the right structure, variant logic, and required fields from the start.
Product families — also called product models in Stackcess — define the structure of your products. Every product in your catalogue belongs to one family, which determines what fields are available, how variants are structured, and what content is required.
Getting your families right from the start is one of the most important decisions you will make. A well-structured family means clean data and smooth publishing. A poorly designed one means ongoing rework.
What a product family controls
When you assign a product to a family, it inherits:
- The set of fields available for that product type
- Which fields are required versus optional
- How variants are structured — for example, by size and flavour, or by capacity and colour
- Which completeness checks apply when preparing content for publishing
When to create a new family
You do not need a separate family for every product category. Create a new family only when the differences are genuine and permanent:
- The required fields are substantially different from your existing families
- The variant axes differ — for example, a protein powder uses size and flavour while a device uses capacity and colour
- Compliance or regulatory requirements differ by product type
Avoid creating separate families for different sales channels, temporary launches, or partner-specific exports. This creates unnecessary admin overhead and inconsistent data.
Before you launch a new family
Run through this checklist before making a family available to your team:
- Define which products belong to this family with a few real examples
- Confirm all required fields and your identifier strategy — SKU, SCIN, barcode
- Map out which attribute groups apply and what order makes sense for editors
- Test completeness with at least two market and channel combinations
- Walk a sample parent product and a few variants through the editor
- Confirm any import or migration mapping and train your editors
Changing a live family
Once products are using a family, treat changes carefully. Adding new fields is usually safe. Removing or renaming fields, or changing variant axes, can break exports, integrations, and partner content feeds.
If you need to restructure a live family, prefer adding new fields over removing old ones, deprecate fields gradually rather than deleting them outright, and check what integrations or partner templates depend on the affected fields before making changes.