How To Add A Parent ASIN For Amazon Product Listings

One of the most common questions that are asked by Amazon Central Sellers is “How do I add a Parent ASIN to my existing products?” Unless you have manually created parent and child products simultaneously there is no ability to go back and manually do so later.

The solution is to do a Flat File upload that creates a new SKU for the parent and lists it as such for both of the current child products. The reason for doing this is because it makes it easier for your customer to choose size/color/options.

If your products are all listed separately, a customer may come along and find a blue shirt, but then have to search your store or research on Amazon to find a red one.

If the products are all listed under one parentage you are likely to increase sales of variations products.

𝙃𝙚𝙧𝙚’𝙨 𝙝𝙤𝙬 𝙮𝙤𝙪 add ASIN:

  1. Log in to Amazon Seller Central
  2. Go to Inventory – Add Products Via Upload
  3. Select “Download Template”
  4. Download the File Template and Browse Tree Guide of your current product listing
  5. Open your File Template and populate the following information for the parent: (specifically all bold fields that are required)

𝗣𝗔𝗥𝗘𝗡𝗧:

  1. SKU (Typically this will be your child SKU’s with the variation left off i.e.: for ABC-1000-XL, etc., you would do ABC-1000)
  2. Leave Product ID and Product ID Type BLANK (Amazon will assign an ASIN and there is no UPC)
  3. Product Name, Brand Name, Manufacturer, Manufacturer Part Number
  4. Product Type (Select from Drop Down)
  5. Item Type Keyword (from Browse Tree Guide)

𝗖𝗛𝗜𝗟𝗗:

  1. SKU
  2. Product ID: ASIN
  3. Product ID Type: ASIN
  4. Update/Delete: Partial Update

*𝙉𝙤𝙩𝙚 that your child variations need to have unique names, like the “Product name – Size ”Enter the Information for the Variation like in the chart below.

Choose the correct variation theme for both parent and child (always the same).

Variation – Populate these attributes if your product is available in different variations (for example color or wattage) Parentage

  • Parent SKU
  • Relationship Type
  • Variation Theme parent_child
  • Parent_SKU
  • relationship type
  • variation_themparent
  • child
  • ABC-1000
  • Variation
  • Size Name child
  • ABC-1000
  • Variation
  • Size Name

Lastly, fill out the section that you chose for the Variation Theme. If you chose a Size Name for the variation theme. Be sure to fill out the Size column for all child products.

If you choose Color, be sure to fill out the Color and Color Map (if applicable). Save As Type Text (Tab Delimited) and upload the file by choosing Inventory for Non-Media Categories (if non-media). Select Upload Now. If all information is entered correctly it should create a variation parent that then houses the variation children.

Note that some sizes may not appear in order and there is nothing that is in Amazon’s system that allows you to correct for this currently. Once the Upload Status is Complete download your Processing Report. if the number of records activated equals the number of records uploaded the upload was successful. You may get an error in the report that the Main Image URL, Product Feature, or Product Description but this is not needed for the parent.

Congratulations on creating or separating your first variation parentage on Amazon and happy sales.

𝗥𝗲𝗺𝗼𝘃𝗲 𝗮 𝗖𝗵𝗶𝗹𝗱 𝗔𝗦𝗜𝗡 𝗳𝗿𝗼𝗺 𝗮 𝗣𝗮𝗿𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝗶𝗻 𝗔𝗺𝗮𝘇𝗼𝗻:

While adding child variations to a parent is somewhat complex, removing a child ASIN typically just requires a call to Amazon Seller Support, speaking with someone in the Amazon Catalog department, and asking them to manually separate the ASIN from the parentage.

Updates should be visible on the listing page within 10-15 minutes. Occasionally the catalogue department will be unable to separate the ASIN and you will need to delete the parent and child products and re-upload them. Typically Amazon requires that you wait 24 to 48 hours before re-uploading the same SKU, but you can ask that they refresh the system on the backend to allow you to re-upload sooner to avoid loss of sales.

Note that before you delete any product or parent you should have seller support turn on the Category Listing Report and download it for every category you sell products in. Yes, will allow you to easily create Excel spreadsheets to re-upload the products. Note that by simply deleting a parent ASIN any child variation will result in a 404 not found page error and will not be visible on Amazon.com.

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