Product and Varriants

-- url of the page with the problem -- : 185.25.22.156/petshop.gr/
-- HikaShop version -- : 2.6.0
-- Joomla version -- : 3.4.4
-- PHP version -- : 5.3.10

Hi,
I am a bit confused about product varriants and how to setup them.

An example:
I have a product e.g Rokus dog food with the available flavors: beef, chicken & liver.
I have already setup Characteristics e.g. Choose Food Flavor with values beef, chicken & liver.

What I do:
1) Go to New Product and insert product datas (name, product, code, categories, ....) then Save
2) Add Characteristic (Choose Food Flavor) and Default Value (e.g. Beef), then Save Characteristics.
3) Go to Variants Tabs then Add variants (e.g. Chicken and Live). Edit their product code and Save.

My questions:
Why I don't see the Beef variant (remember I choose it as the default value on the characteristic area)?
Do I have to add it on the Variants tab? If so (add the beef variant) i notice that i can't have the same product code (beef variant) with the main product (message: dupplicate 'Product-Code...' for key 'product_code' ....).
But there is no Rokus dog food without flavour (main product).

What is your suggestion?

Hi,

Yes, you need to add it in the Variants tab.
And yes, you can't have a variant with the same product code as the main product.
The main product cannot be bought by the customer, but you still need to define a product code for it. However, you can put anything you want as product code of the main product.

Usually people do something like that:
main product's code: my_code
variants code: my_code_v1, my_code_v2, my_code_v3, etc