[ic] Creating a sub shop

Jamie Neil jamie at versado.net
Fri Apr 23 07:06:12 EDT 2004


Hi All,

I've been given the problem of integrating a new supplier into an 
existing IC5 store, but they (the supplier) have laid down some rather 
strict (and odd) ground rules which include:

1) We are not allowed to display the price of their products anywhere in 
the store apart from the basket and checkout. So in order to see how 
much something is then a customer must add the item to their basket.

2) We are not allowed to display their products next to products from 
other manufacturers.

I've tried telling them (and the store owners) that they are crazy, but 
the supplier is sticking to their line and won't budge an inch. They 
haven't been able to do this in the US for various reasons (I supect 
legal ones), so this is for EU markets only.

The problem is that this supplier is _very_ prestigious and it's 
considered worthwhile to jump through any number of hoops just to be 
able to sell their stuff.

My current plan is this:

1) Create a "sub shop" dedicated to their products - 
http://domain.com/supplier/

2) Create a separate table for holding their products.

3) Limit _all_ searches in the rest of the store (IC and SQL) to using 
the main products table only. I'm using action maps for a lot of IC 
searches at the moment so I'm hoping this should be fairly easy.

4) Limit searches in the sub shop to using the new product table.

5) Make components intelligent enough to know which bit of the store 
they are being displayed in and use the correct products table.

Can anyone shoot any holes in this plan or suggest a better approach?

-- 
Jamie Neil | <jamie at versado.net> | 0870 7777 454
Versado I.T. Services Ltd. | http://versado.net/ | 0845 450 1254


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