Product subcomponents

Hi,

We have a new customer we are developing a site for and part of the build is ecommerce support. The primary product they sell is piping components. The tricky part is that each piping component is actually made up of several prearranged subcomponents. Those sub components are supposed to be able to be sold individually. Moreover, when buying the main component, the sub components are supposed to be configurable by material etc. See below for a made up example for clarification.

Kentico's bundling feature seems like it could handle this scenario; however, it seems like an abuse of the bundling feature because that would preclude the client from ever offering bundles of the main components. This is something they have said they would like to be able to do.

Has anyone ever encountered a similar scenario where a logical product has individually sellable sub products? If not, what would be a recommended solution?

Thanks for reading,

T

Made up example

They market a product called A1000, and this is what the sales people know and push. A1000 is actually made up of 3 sub components X100, Y200, and Z300. X100 can be configured to be brass or nickle, Y200 can be steel or copper, and Z300 is plastic. Occasionally, a sub component breaks and needs to be replaced. Our client would like their customers to be able to view their order history and see that the A1000 they purchased was configured with a brass X100 and the customer should be able to order a replacement brass X100.