Master Brand Functionality in Yelo

Why do we need MasterBrand?

The Master Brand feature in Yelo is a critical tool for organizations operating a marketplace or brand-level ecosystem with multiple merchants. It addresses the challenge of maintaining brand consistency and operational efficiency across numerous stores.

Key Benefits:

• Standardized Catalog: Enforces a uniform structure for categories, products, and addons across all associated merchants, ensuring a consistent customer experience.
• Standardized Catalog: Enforces a uniform structure for categories, products, and addons across all associated merchants, ensuring a consistent customer experience.
• Centralized Management: Allows central administrators to manage core catalog elements, reducing manual effort for individual merchants and ensuring adherence to brand guidelines.
• Efficient Onboarding: Accelerates the onboarding of new merchants by providing them with a pre-defined catalog, minimizing setup time.
• Brand Consistency: Guarantees that all merchants reflect the core brand identity in their product offerings and catalog presentation

Note: This feature is not supported in Single Store or Laundry Flow configurations.

Enabling Master Brand

To activate the Master Brand feature:

1. Navigate to Admin Panel >> Order Settings >> Catalog Section.
2. Toggle “Enable Masterbrand” to activate the feature.

Once enabled, the admin can create multiple Master Brands, each assignable to one or more merchants.

Admin Configurations and Capabilities

As a central administrator, you have comprehensive control over the Master Brand:

• Create/Edit Master Brands: Define and modify multiple distinct Master Brands.
• Assign Merchants: Link specific merchants to one or more Master Brands.
• Catalog Definition:
  • Add, edit, enable, disable, and archive Categories for the Master Brand.
  • Add, edit, enable, disable, and archive Products for the Master Brand.
  • Add, edit, enable, and disable Addons for the Master Brand.
• Inventory Management: Centrally control product inventory if “Universal Toggle” is enabled.
• Brand Discounts: Configure and apply discounts that are inherited by all associated merchants

Archive Feature 

The “Archive” feature allows administrators (and merchants for their own content, with specific limitations) to effectively remove categories or products from active display without permanently deleting them.

• Admin Perspective: When an admin archives a category or product in the Master Brand, it becomes inactive and is hidden from customers across all inherited merchants. This is useful for seasonal items, discontinued lines, or items temporarily unavailable.
• Merchant Perspective: Merchants can archive categories or products that they have added or those that have become “Custom” to remove them from their store’s customer view.

Behavior for Inherited Merchants

Merchants who inherit a Master Brand operate under specific controls defined by the central admin. Their abilities are a mix of inheriting standard brand content and having limited customization options.

Merchant Abilities:

Merchants have partial control over their catalog based on Master Brand configurations:

• Categories:
  • Can Add/Edit/Enable/Disable: Merchants can add new categories specific to their store, or edit/enable/disable existing categories that are either inherited from the Master Brand or custom to their store.
  • Can Archive: Merchants can archive categories to hide them from customer view.
• Products:
  • Can Add/Edit/Enable/Disable: Merchants can add new products specific to their store, or edit/enable/disable existing products. (Note: Editing inherited products makes them “Custom”).
  • Can Archive: Merchants can archive products to hide them from customer view.
• Addons:
  • Cannot Assign: Merchants cannot independently assign addons to products. Addon assignments are centrally controlled by the Master Brand.

Merchant Level Access (Name/Description):

At the merchant level, the access specifically refers to the merchant’s ability to view, manage, and modify their own store’s catalog within the framework of the Master Brand. They can see what they’ve inherited and what they’ve added or customized.

Product Management

Product Level Controls for Merchants:

Merchants have fine-grained control over product visibility and order behavior:

• Enable/Disable: Merchants can enable or disable products, allowing them to hide specific products from their customers without removing them from the catalog.
• Side Order Toggle:
  • If the “Side Order Toggle” is enabled at the product level (either by the Master Brand admin or by the merchant if allowed), addons will NOT be reflected for the customer for that specific product.
  • This applies even if addons are otherwise configured for the product. It effectively disables the “add-on” selection for that product.

Merchant Features, Custom vs. Brand Products:

This distinction is crucial for understanding how merchant modifications interact with the Master Brand.

• Brand Feature / Inherited Product:
  • Products marked as “Brand” (or inherited from Master Brand) are directly controlled by the Master Brand.
  • Any changes made by the Master Brand admin to these products will automatically reflect across all inheriting merchants.
  • Merchants cannot independently change core details of “Brand” products without breaking the inheritance.
• Custom Feature / Custom Product:
  • When a merchant edits an existing “Brand” product (e.g., changes its description, price, or any core attribute), that product automatically becomes “Custom” for that specific merchant.
  • Implication: Once a product becomes “Custom,” it is no longer updated by the Master Brand. Future changes by the Master Brand admin to the original product will not affect the merchant’s “Custom” version.
  • Merchants can also add entirely new products directly to their store, which are by default “Custom” and only visible to their store and not to the Master Brand’s core catalog.

Inventory Management

Inventory management can be configured to operate in two primary modes:

• Universal Toggle Enabled:
  • Inventory for products is managed centrally by the Master Brand Admin.
  • All inherited merchants will display the inventory levels set by the admin. This is ideal for ensuring consistent stock availability across all stores or if products are sourced from a central warehouse.
• Merchant Toggle Enabled:
  • When this option is enabled, merchants gain the ability to manage their inventory independently for products.
  • Within this mode, merchants can choose between two sub-options for each product:
    • Brand: The product’s inventory is still synced with the Master Brand’s inventory. This is useful if some products are centrally managed while others are not.
    • Custom: The merchant can set and manage the inventory for this product entirely independently. This typically applies to products they have edited and made “Custom,” or products they have added themselves.

Category Behavior

The interaction between admin and merchant when adding categories is specific:

• When Admin adds a Category in Master Brand:
  • The newly added category reflects across all inherited merchants automatically. This ensures fundamental catalog structure consistency.
• When Merchant adds a Category:
  • The category gets added to the Master Brand’s overall category list but is explicitly scoped to that specific merchant only. It will not automatically appear for other inherited merchants unless explicitly enabled by the Master Brand admin or another merchant. This allows merchants to add their own unique categories without cluttering other stores.

Category-level Side Order:

Similar to product-level, categories can also be marked with a “Side Order Toggle” from both the admin and merchant levels. If enabled for a category, it implies that products within this category will not display add-on options, irrespective of individual product settings. This provides a broad control mechanism for specific sections of the catalog.

Manager Access to Master Brand

A manager role, if granted appropriate access permissions, can view and edit the Master Brand data, enabling delegated administration or collaborative management of the brand catalog.

Brand Discount Feature

The Brand Discount feature allows central administrators to apply promotions that are automatically inherited by all associated merchants, ensuring unified promotional strategies.

1. Navigate to Admin Panel >> Marketing >> Promotions >> Discount.
2. A section called “Brand Discount” will be available.
3. Admin Actions:
   • • Admin can select a specific Master Brand.
     • They can then define and apply a discount (either percentage-based or flat amount) to be inherited by all merchants operating under that Master Brand.
4. Merchant Overwrite Option:
   • • If a merchant does not wish to apply the brand-level discount, they have the flexibility to overwrite it at their level with a custom discount specific to their store. This allows merchants to tailor promotions to their local needs while still benefiting from the central discount structure.