Wire Rope Exchange - Frequently Asked Questions

For your convenience, here are some of the questions we are asked about Buying and Selling products on the Exchange, or setting up a Directory listing for your company.  Have a question we didn’t answer here?  Please contact editor@wireropeexchange.com and we’ll be glad to help you!

Buying Products on Wire Rope Exchange

Our catalog is not set up to support e-commerce at this time.  The products you see on our site are owned by, and sold directly by, our Members.  You can contact them directly to confirm availability, pricing, terms, delivery, etc.

Each product on the Exchange is listed by one of our Members.  When you click on and view any specific product, you’ll find the listing member’s complete contact details – their address, phone number, Email, and website link are all usually available.  Contact them directly!

Start at “Buy” and select the overall category you want to search:  Wire Rope, Lifting Products, Equipment.  If you select “Lifting Products” you’ll be asked to select a specific sub-category (e.g., Hooks, Turnbuckles, etc.) before being presented with the complete product listing screen.

When you reach the product listing screen, you’ll be able to scroll down through the initial description of each product listed in that category.  Items are in order by Listing Date, so that the most recently listed item is at the top.

You will also see a toolbar (highlighted in orange) that offers three options to refine your search:  Filter, Advanced Search, and Show/Hide Columns.  You will also see a Search box to the right of the orange toolbar.

Choosing “Filter” presents you with a set of attributes allowing you to “drill down” to specific listings meeting any of the criteria you select.

Choosing “Advanced Search” allows you to define a set of conditions to “drill down” to specific listings that meet.  Click on “Add Condition” and you presented with three drop-downs.  Data selects a product attribute, Condition offers values such as “Equals” or “Not” and then “Value is the specific thing you want (or do not want).  The main difference between Advanced Search and Filter is the ability to search by exclusion (“not equal to”) while Filter is purely searching by inclusion (you select a specific attribute and include only that).

Show/Hide Columns allows you to see all of the attributes available in any product category, and select which columns to display. This allows you to search the entire table with more, or less, information displayed, which you choose.

In the Search box directly to the right of the orange toolbar, you can enter any search term.  Only items where that term appears in the description will be shown.

No, you do not!  Our members pay an annual membership fee to list their products, and nothing else.

You might consider looking for listings that are somewhat similar to what you need, and contacting the company or companies that posted those listings.  They may already have, or be able to order, exactly what you need.

Selling Products on Wire Rope Exchange

From anywhere on the site, look for the orange “Account” button at the top right corner of the page.  Once you’ve clicked on that, look for the orange tab on your My Account page that reads “Product”.  Clicking on that tab will show you the products you have listed.  To add a product, click on the orange box that reads “Add Product” and fill in the information on that page!

Anything used for listing, rigging, or load securement – or associated with cranes or material handling – may be appropriate to list on Wire Rope Exchange.  If you don’t see a category immediately appropriate for your product, we have a Miscellaneous grouping under “Lifting Products”.

Our distributor partners most often use the Exchange to list…

  • Products that they happen to have on hand but don’t normally stock.
  • Second-hand or used products they are trying to market.
  • Overstock or discontinued items that they are eager to move.

In general, listing products that your customers or prospects would not expect you to have, or that are unique or unusual, should produce the best results.

Our manufacturing partners will often use the Exchange to list a handful of their most popular or significant products – those might be their largest, or newest, or most technically advanced items.

That approach takes advantage of the fact that your newest listings will appear on your company’s “storefront” page in the Directory, further enhancing the value of that page as a marketing tool for your business.

Hey, that’s two questions!  Technically, the answer to both is “no”.  That said, listing your products is a manual process, so listing a vast number of products would take a LOT of time and patience!  And that’s not all… once you have all of your desired items listed, you’ll need to manage those listings in order to remove items as they are sold.  We encourage our members to list the items they are most eager to sell, and to price them accordingly!  See our response question above item above “what products SHOULD I list…”

Yes!  We publish a Catalog Deadline for each issue, and circulate an email reminder shortly before each deadline.  After that date we download the current listings and lay them out for publication.  One other note:  While we encourage you to put a complete description of your product in the “Description” field when you input your listing, be aware that we may edit that field for length when we lay it out for the printer.

No, you do not!  Your annual PREMIUM membership fee gives you complete access to this service.

Using the Wire Rope Exchange Directory

We are working right now to significantly enhance the Member Search function of our Directory with some additional information about our Members’ product and service offerings.  As those capabilities come online, you’ll be first to take advantage of their benefits.

Once you have logged into your account, click on the orange “My Account” button at the top right corner of the website.  On that page, headed “My Account”, look for the Business Profile tab.  When you click on the “Business Profile” tab, you’ll see two tabs below that.  The “Company Information” tab is where you enter the publicly facing information about your business that will appear on your Storefront page in our Directory.  The “Company Offerings” tab is where you provide additional basic information about the products and services that you offer, and select the geographic areas that you serve.  Please fill that out – we’ll be using that to enhance the Search function in our Directory very soon!