Hello - I'm new to DC, but have created a fairly complex brochure site where I learned entity reference, views, panels, and display suite well.

We would like to use Commerce Kickstart as a starting point for our small business ecommerce site, but want to make significant changes to the theme and site layouts.

Theme: I understand that Commerce Kickstart is a subtheme of Omega and that I am able to subtheme the Kickstart subtheme. On my previous site, I used Corolla and only needed to make minor modifications to color, etc. Under the Kickstart theme, I don't see any options to modify the colors of the theme. Is this the case?

Product Display: The current product display looks just like the demo store, which tells me I've got my categories and variations set up correctly. However, we would like to switch up the layout significantly to highlight fields specific to our needs, e.g. we would like to include some charts, technical specs (tables), and an additional write-up. The current layout / view for the Product Displays appears to be very limiting...and I can't figure out where it is being controlled. (From other posts, it appears to be controlled in the template file.)

I would prefer to supercede the template file and use Panels to have more control over the layout with more fleixibility. I have downloaded the Panels module and turned on: Panels, Panels In-Place Editor, and Panel Nodes.

I am not sure where to start so that I can make my own Panel-based layout for the Product Variations. I have searched and searched for a tutorial on this, but haven't found anything that is clear to me.

Can you please point me in the right direction?

Thanks