Guide · 6 min read

How to sell rope, trim and tube by the length on Shopify

Rope, cord, ribbon, trim, cable, hose, tube, chain, edging: anything on a reel is sold by the length the customer needs, often in several pieces. Here's how to price length properly, with the cut steps, minimums and per-cut fees that make it work for you.

What goes into the price

• A price per metre or foot, the heart of it. Thicker rope or a premium material can have its own rate.
• The cut step. If you cut in 10 cm or 6-inch steps, round the length up to the next step before pricing.
• A minimum length, so nobody orders 4 cm of rope with postage on top.
• A per-cut fee for sealing ends, deburring or measuring each piece.
• End fittings such as crimps, eyelets, splices or end caps, priced per piece or per end.

Shopify's quantity box can count whole metres, and that's enough if you only sell whole metres in one piece. As soon as customers want 3 × 1.35 m with sealed ends, the price needs a calculator.

A worked example

Braided rope at £3.20 per metre, cut in 10 cm steps, with a £0.75 fee per cut. A customer wants 3 pieces of 1.35 m: each is cut at 1.4 m, so 3 × (1.4 × £3.20 + £0.75) = £15.69. Try your own:

For customers in feet: 1 ft = 0.3048 m, so £3.20 per metre is about £0.98 per foot.

Details customers ask about

• One piece or several? Make the number of pieces its own box, so “3 × 1.35 m” isn't typed as “4.05 m” and delivered as one length.
• Feet or metres. Price in your unit and let customers type theirs; it's converted before pricing.
• The longest piece. Set the maximum length to your reel, so a single piece never needs a join.
• Colours running out. Mark a colour sold out when its reel runs out, so it can't be picked.
• How it's cut. “Ends heat-sealed, cut to the next 10 cm” next to the length box answers the question before the email.

Setting it up with a calculator

Here's how it looks with MeasureLab, the calculator app we make. The same ideas apply to any calculator app.

1. Start from the “Cut-to-size (by length)” template, or start blank with a Length input in metres, with your shortest and longest piece.
2. Add a Pieces input as a whole number, starting at 1.
3. Price it: pieces × (ceilto(length, 0.1) × 3.20 + 0.75) rounds each piece up to the next 10 cm and adds the cut fee.
4. Add end fittings as choices with their own price, and colours as choices with a stock count.
5. Turn on the unit switch so customers can type feet or inches, then publish and place the calculator block on your product page.

The order then shows the length, the number of pieces and the fittings next to the line, and the price is checked again at checkout.