Advanced product import

We are working in the motorsport eCommerce sector for over a decade now and almost all of them have their product data in a very simple (would even say crude) format.
What does that mean, simple format? Well, you know Excel right?
Some manufactures have an application file for their products (and we thank them for that!) but..

In these application files they have on column A their partnumber, column B the car brand it fits into and in column C the car model… so far so good.
until that same partnumber fits in different car models or even different car brands

Guess what happens…

Yes, that… a new row in the application file.
Take a look in the screenshot below how that looks. (it does look a bit different compared to the description mentioned above but you get the point)

The Abarth 500/595/695 all use the same partnumbers (in red)

Import logic… is not logical

So you want to use the above file to update your product attributes in Magento 2? (or any other webshop)
Well this will happen:
It will import the first row just fine and when it is finished with the first row it will go the second row.. so far so good.
But since the second row is for the same product as the first row, it will overwrite the data from the first row with data from the second row of your file… and so on and so on.

This behaviour will go on as long as you have rows with the same partnumber!
In the end it will only show the data that was in the last row with that partnumber, it will not stack the data.

So in a way the import logic is logical, it doesn’t know if the data has to be added to the previous row.
What it does now is simply undesireable.

The fix, for us at least…

We have wrote a program that accepts import files like the one in the screenshot but exports it in usefull format where car brands & models are listed/grouped all together based on the partnumber.
So we have one row per partnumber and all possible car brands & models in the next columns (B & C in this case)

While we have limited this example only to car brands and car models we can extend it with infinite other options.
Or use a different set of attributes (colour and size for shoes for example), the theory behind the program remains the same.

You need it too?

At the time of writing we don’t have this program open for use on the internet, but that doesn’t mean you can use this program!

It is not free unfortunately.

If you are interested to make use of this service, let us know how many different kinds of attributes (the columns in your excel) and what other information is of importance for you and we can make a price for you!