Magento

Is it possible to have the main website serve as a catalog for items in all stores? items from each store will be recategorized based on the main website’s categories and visitors will be able to navigate them later by store (shop by store: x / y / z).

Yes, it is supported out of the box.

Please, can you give more information?

Thank you Michael. It is supported out of the box… well almost.

CBC,

Background:

I have several stores on one website. I want to offer the visitor the ability to shop on either a store by store basis or on category by category basis. In the latter case (category basis), I want layered navigation to show ‘shop by store’ and list stores. So visitors who chose to shop by category can narrow down items later based on store.

My solution:

Stores X, Y, Z are real stores with their own items, they all belong to My Website. Store A was created inside My Website and it is a virtual store that contains all items found in stores X, Y, Z. Each one of A, X, Y, Z has its own category structure.

For layered navigation to display ‘shop by store’, I created a Store attribute and added store X, Y, Z as possible values. When adding each product, I choose whether it’s a product of X, or Y, or Z by choosing the right value in Store attribute, and also by assigning it to two categories (store A category and store X/Y/Z category). I also enabled Store attribute to be displayed in layered navigation.

The only issue that exists now is minor. When people choose to shop by stores (not using store A), they will go to Store X for example, and they will also find “shop by store” and they will find store X in the list. Which is pointless.

Thank you _envy.
This must be the only way to do it. I have also several stores on one website and I want to show the products belonging to all stores, but when I “add to cart” one product, I want the product to be on the corresponding cart (every store has his own cart).
In short, we see all products and we can filter them by store, but we can only buy by store.

Thanks a lot, I am going to test it to see if this solution works.

I think you’ll have to create a new website for each store. This way each store will have its own checkout (I think!).

I can’t to create a new website for each store because the customers are the same to all stores. I don’t know how i’ll do…