I have this simple webshop where the client sells cutting discs (B2B). The webshop was initially created so that every disc had it's own page with an 'amount' slider. The more you buy, the cheaper it got. Single unit prices where calculated based on reaching a predefined amount (50,100,200,500,1000).

Last week my client asked to change this and sell each product in two or more variants: plastic packages of 20 discs or boxes of 200. Because of this, I extended each merchello product with a 'variant' named 'amount'. These variants have their own SKU's now (generated by fullfilment system), so the base product SKU isn't used anymore.

I was wondering about this:

I understand that the base SKU is necessary for creating other options/variants, but using this base SKU as a prefix when creating the variants isn't a big added value if SKU's are just dumb numbers created by a fullfilment system. That's the only reason this SKU still exists for variants, right?

• Are there other scenario's where the base-SKU is still necessary after creating variants?
• If not, isn't it more logical that the base SKU disappears after variant creation (and thus is null or empty)?