A question about characteristics

I really enjoy working with HikaShop and almost everyday i learn something new, but one question keeps going through my head since i am not sure if i understand it correctly.

We have a few hundred products and the majority of these are unique in a way that they all have different characteristics or a unique combination of characteristics. For our customers we want to present them in categories.

If i am correct then characteristics can only be applied to entire categories .... so that wouldnt work for me since every product needs its own set of characteristics.

My understanding now is this .....
- i make categories for products with the same characteristics, these categories i deactivate so they dont show in the front end.
- i make categories for products to show in the front end, these categories are activated.
- when i add a product i add it to both above mentioned categories, where the deactivated makes the right characteristics show per product and the activated category makes the products show for our customers in the front end.

Is this the correct approach or can it be done easier?

(Variations are not an option for the characteristics i need, they are already used for sizes etc.)

Thank you Nicolas ...it is hard to explain in an easy way but i will try

I have products with different custom fields and i want to show them in the frontend in one category.
Custom fields have categories appointed to them and not individual products, so if i just placed all the products in the category i want to show in the frontend then all would also get all the same custom fields ...right?

What i did now as a work around was this .....
- i made the category that must show in the frontend
- made subcategories for products with the same custom fields
- the category is active
- the sub category are de-activated
- the custom fields are each attached to the proper sub-category

- when i now enter a product i add it to the active category and the deactivated sub-category with the needed custom fields
- the frontend then shows the active category with has all the products and each has the correct custom fields

It was needed for me since we want to present products in the frontend as shirts, bags etc. Some we embroider, some we press and some we can do both but each have there own custom fields for example "Printcolor" for the bags that can be printed and "Embroiderycolor" for bags that can be embroidered, but still all bags should show in the one category Bags in the frontend.

Example:
So i would create an active category "Bags"
Add two de-activated subcategories "Print" and "Embroidery"
Make a custom field "embroiderycolor" and link it to the deactivated Bags/embroidery subcategory
Make a custom field "printcolor" and link it to the deactivated Bags/print subcategory
Add a embroidery product to both the categories Bags and Bags/embroidery
Add a print product to both the categories Bags and Bags/print
Result: frontend shows only the Bags category with both products each having there own custom fields


I hope this was a bit more clear

Thank you Nicolas ..... i hope my explanation and example might also help others.