Private vs open products

Continuing the discussion from 'Networked e-commerce' overhaul [META]:

Currently negotiating P/V and VO E2E link permissions is a significant barrier to getting started, particularly for groups like bulk dry coops who are often all using the same suppliers.

Work that has been completed on managing the inventory lists has ameliorated some of this problem so that (if they have P-VO) they can now:

  • hide the products / variants that they don’t use, so they’re not cluttering up the workspace
  • manage the regularly changing data like price and stock levels, and ‘enterprise specific’ like SKUs themselves without needing P-P/V.

BUT they currently need to get P/V permission if they want to

  • change images or descriptions
  • add products or variants

As there are quite a lot of cases where the wholesaler or large supplier is not managing their ofn info themselves, this is creating a ‘first mover disadvantage’ whereby the first person to set up this supplier ends up negotiating with and managing the requests of other later users. Changes made with P-P/V permission flow through to other users so have to be really carefully managed.

What we need / want to maintain

  • Need: Single profile for a single enterprise - we do NOT want people to create a new / duplicate profile for a supplier that already exists in the system. This must remain a single point of truth and connection, regardless of who owns it
  • Need: where a supplier DOES want to retain primary control over their products and variants they need to be able to i.e. restrict anyone creating copies or variants of their products unless they have explicitly given permission to do so. This would include the ability to have inventory levels and prices streaming from the underlying P/V
  • Want: avoid needless recreation of products and variants that already exist in the system. Allow new enterprise to ‘take copies’ of open products, variants, [translations?]

Same @Kirsten I would close as we need to reopen new ones that are aligned with all the work we have done on network inceptions. Agree ?

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