What is the best approach?

I am new to Hikashop but have used other e-commerce solutions in the past. I have now the business edition of Hikashop and am working on a new website but have to find the best approach for the products setup.

I will give an example ....

Suppose i have T-shirts in 3 sizes and in 10 colors with a print that can be choosen in 20 different colors. What is the best way to do this in Hikashop?

I tried this ...
- I made a product "T-shirt"
- then used characteristics to create sizes and shirtcolor and printcolor
- made the variants

The good news is this works, but ..... if i choose that product in the frontend the loading time is soooooo much longer. Probably because of loading the 3 x 10 x 20 variants.

Is there a better way to approach this?

And .... what if i have different prizes for the different sizes for instance, how can i make for instance a size S the default prize, M +1 and L +2?

Any help is greatly appreciated!