Long-term issues with ShopSite

[Webmaster]

I have been using ShopSite for a few of my clients since 1997 and I have
observed the direction in which they have taken it.

Each of my clients sell between 500 and 10,000 individual product SKU
numbers a piece. The one thing I have learned about companies this large is
that a product name actually defines a group of SKU numbers rather than just
one SKU number. Because of this, the product order options list in ShopSite
cannot be used on a product page since every variation of that product must
be identified by it's own number. If my client wants to put a sale on a SKU
number than he would have to apply it to all the SKU numbers in the dropdown
menu list.

Because of this, I have to enter each product variation as a separate
product record. Where I run into problems with this is when I want to
utilize the More Info page feature and wind up with a separate page for 20
variations of the same product. Instead, I manually create "More Info" pages
in the page database but, it becomes almost impossible to keep track of
sub-category pages they are being applied to.

The other option I thought of was grouping these variations together as
subproduct lists but then I will have used up the idea of having cross-sell
items in the store. Each product is only allowed one subproduct template and
I use a common format for presenting cross-sell items and subproducts.

In my opinion, ShopSite has the potential of handling very large workflows
IF they could focus more on how large manufacturer's define their products.
I think the options drop down list should include the ability to mirror
individual record numbers in the product database.

I have checked out the E-Com Assembler and while it is impressive, the
upload/download workflow would be too unstable if you are managing it
remotely. (example: deleting pages locally would mean having to manually
delete them on the server, etc.)

What we really need is a workflow like E-Com Assembler built into a remote
server application like ShopSite. Is there any way of bringing these two
products together into one? (Of course while sparing the best of both
worlds)

Just a long-term suggestion...