This feature is only applicable only if your store has not been migrated to use SKU feature in Rakuten because all products will be in Single mode and you can configure options for each variants in Single mode now. Ignore this if your store has already been migrated.  


When using the Rakuten Ichiba Sales channel there are two methods of publishing Shopify products on Rakuten:


  1. Single Mode - One Shopify product per Rakuten Item

  2. Multi Mode - One Shopify product variant per Rakuten Item


Due to differences in the way Shopify and Rakuten handle variants, there are situations when a Shopify product is unable to be imported into Rakuten as 1 item.  When this situation occurs the only available publishing mode will be Multi Mode.


Single Mode

When you publish an item in Single Mode, it means that a Shopify product will create a single Rakuten Item.  This Rakuten item will also contain the variants if the Shopify product also has variants.


Multi Mode

Publishing in Multi Mode will result in creating a Rakuten Item per Shopify variant.  This is necessary when it is not possible to publish the Shopify product with variants in RMS.


For example, a Shopify product with the following options:


Will produce 3 Rakuten items:


  1. Product Name - Small

  2. Product Name - Medium

  3. Product Name - Large




Publishing Mode Constraints

Shopify products allow you to create variants of the product (e.g. Size, Color and Material).



Shopify limits variants to a maximum of 3 options and a maximum of 100 variants for a product.

Rakuten also supports product variants but limits you to 2 option types with 20 option values per type.



Due to the mismatch in how Shopify and Rakuten treat product variants, It is not possible to publish an RMS item with variants when a Shopify product has the following features:

  • 3 Option types

  • More than 20 Option values per Option type


When this occurs the Rakuten Ichiba Sales Channel will limit the publishing mode to only Multi Mode.



IMPORTANT:

  • If you change add, delete, or modify variant names then this will cause the mapping to go out of sync in RMS.  The application will unpublish the items when this happens
  • Please ensure that you republish items to RMS to ensure the latest information is sent to RakutenRMS