A merchant needs to sell fabric both by the meter (1-10m cuts) and by full rolls, where each roll varies in length (30m, 40m, or 50m). Each color and roll length requires unique SKUs, but these shouldn’t be customer-selectable options.
Core Challenge:
Price must multiply correctly whether customers order cut lengths or full rolls
Roll lengths vary even within the same fabric color
Standard quantity selectors don’t accommodate both fractional meter purchases and variable roll lengths
Proposed Solutions:
Setting price per 10 meters with quantity adjustments (rejected: doesn’t allow 1-9 meter purchases)
Using product metafields to set roll meters with quantity limits (concern: inconsistent roll lengths from supplier may cause pricing mismatches)
Current Status:
The merchant has custom-coded a dropdown for roll vs. cut selection but discovered roll length variability afterward. They’re considering requesting standardized roll lengths from their supplier or testing the metafield approach, while noting that limiting quantities could create poor experience for business customers ordering multiple rolls.
Summarized with AI on October 31.
AI used: claude-sonnet-4-5-20250929.
I’m not sure if this is possible or if an app actually provides this functionality.
I will be selling fabric by the metre or by the roll.
However, I need the ability for Shopify to prefill a particular “roll” with a certain SKU when the customer opens the page, should they choose to order an entire roll or just by the meter. Because each roll will be different and will be either 30m, 40m or 50m.
Each colour and roll will have their own SKU’s. But it shouldn’t be an option for the customer to choose. The price will then need to be multiplied by the pre-chosen sku with the set amount of metres. This will apply to approximately 15 different products. So once one is setup, the rest will follow the same principle.
I’ve already setup custom code to show the option for if they want to choose an entire roll vs a cut roll for a certain amount of metres.
If there is an alternative automated way the customer can get a predetermined roll amount input onto the product page, then open to ideas!
Anyone have any ideas on if this is even possible?
The customers still need to be able to choose to order 1-10 meters if that’s all they need and that price will still need to be multiplied by the number they input. So if the quantity is set at 1/per 10m, then they can’t order 0.1 for 1 meter.
I’ve tried using the quantity selector as the price per meter as well, but then the price per roll won’t be the same since the whole roll might be 30m-50m.
It’s a great suggestion though!
I couldn’t find any product variant apps that fit the criteria for dynamic solutions so I coded the drop down. But learnt the rolls vary after writting the code.
I might try that and see how it goes. But since each product and fabric colour can be the same but have different length per roll we recieve, it might not match watch we send the customer and what they pay for.
If it doesn’t work, I might just need to see if the supplier can provide a set length on each roll, so it’s consistent and can just use the quantity option per meter.
We will also have business customers buying several rolls for a single colour at a time, so it won’t be an ideal customer experince if we limit them to one roll per colour per order.