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Merchants who sell more than one kind of thing end up repeating themselves. Every pair of shoes needs Size and Colour, belongs under Footwear, and wants a Material field. Every book needs an ISBN and an author. A product type captures that once. Creating a product from a type gives it the right option types, the right categories, the right delivery profile, and a form that asks for the fields that kind of product actually needs. Find them under Settings → Product types.

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Creating a type

Click New product type, name it — “Footwear”, “Books” — and choose what it seeds:

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A type is a template, not a rule

This is the part that decides how to think about them. A type is applied when a product is created. After that, the product is its own record:
  • Editing the type later does not change products already made from it. Add an option type to Footwear and existing shoes are untouched.
  • A product can be moved to a different type, or detached from its type, without losing anything.
  • Required on a custom field is advice to the person filling in the form, not a rule the server enforces.
If you do want to push a type’s option types and categories onto the products that already carry it, use Apply to products. It previews how many products will change, and only ever adds — it never removes what a product already has.