If your Shopify store sells personalised products, you already know how important their line item properties are. They’re how you capture the engraving text, the print size, the monogram initials, the custom message and everything that makes an order specific to that customer.
When that customer comes back to reorder, they expect the same product with the same customised details. What they get with Shopify’s default Buy Again button is the products added to the cart but with no line item properties attached to it.
What are line item properties on Shopify?
Line item properties are custom fields attached to each product in the cart. They carry through to the Shopify checkout and appear on the order in your Shopify admin, making them the standard way to capture:
- Personalisation details like engraving text, print copy, monogram initials, custom sizes
- Instructions like gift messages, packaging notes, special handling
- Colour or material choices like specific colour codes, fabric selections, finish options chosen at the product page
- Custom artwork details like design references, file names, print placement notes
They’re set up through your product page (using input fields, dropdowns, or text areas in your theme) and stored against each product variant in the cart.
Why the native Buy Again button drops line item properties
The native Buy Again button works by taking the product variants from a past order and adding them to the cart. It does not retrieve the line item properties from that order.
For a store selling plain products, this isn’t noticeable. For a store selling customised or personalised products, it means every reorder is missing the information that makes the product personalised.
A customer who ordered an engraved bracelet with “Emma & Jack, 2019” clicks Buy Again. The bracelet goes to cart. The engraving field is empty. If they don’t notice before checkout, you’re fulfilling an order without the engraving detail or sending a blank piece.
Who this affects
Engraved and personalised jewellery stores where customers fill in engraving text, monogram initials, or custom messages at the product page. When the Buy Again button drops those fields, you’re fulfilling a blank product — and the customer often doesn’t notice until it arrives.
Gift and packaging stores where gift messages, packaging preferences, and special handling notes are captured as line item properties. Losing them on reorder means the gift is fulfilled wrong, or the packaging request is missed entirely.
Made-to-order and configurable product stores where colour codes, fabric selections, and finishing options chosen at the product page are stored as line item properties, not as variants. A reorder that loses these details will send the wrong configuration even if the SKU matches.
Print-on-demand stores where design details and print placement notes need to be carried through on every reorder. Without these details, the repeat order can’t be fulfilled to the same specification as the original order.
How Buy Again & Reorder Reminders handles line item properties
Buy Again & Reorder Reminders adds a reorder popup to each order in the customer’s account. When a customer opens it, the app shows all products from the original order along with the line item properties stored against each product.
The customer can decide whether they want customisation details i.e. line item properties, from the previous order. If a customer wants the line item properties, then they carry through to the cart and into the new order exactly as they appear in the popup. No manual re-entry needed and no missing customisation details at checkout.
What A Brush With Love found
A Brush With Love is a Shopify store that sells personalised products. After migrating to Shopify’s new customer accounts, they needed a reorder solution that specifically preserved their customer’s customisation details.
“Our customers customise our products, so having a reorder app that correctly carries over product line item details is absolutely essential and this app does that perfectly. It also handles stock really well, and there are exactly the right settings available to make it work for different types of products and business needs.”
— A Brush With Love
Buy Again & Reorder Reminders works natively with Shopify new customer accounts and carries line item properties through to the cart on every reorder.
Setting it up
- Install Buy Again & Reorder Reminders from the Shopify App Store
- Go to Shopify admin → Settings → Customer accounts
- Open the customer account editor
- Add the reorder popup block to the order list page or order status page
Once enabled, the reorder popup automatically reads line item properties from past orders and pre-fills them. No code needed. No theme edits needed.
A note on B2B stores
For wholesale buyers, line item properties often serve a different purpose—they’re procurement data, not personalisation. PO numbers, cost centre codes, department references. These need to be accurate on every order, and asking buyers to re-enter them manually on every reorder creates both friction and error risk.
The same setup applies to B2B and B2C stores. The reorder popup shows whatever properties were on the original order, whether that’s an engraving or a PO number.
If your products have any kind of customisation captured via line item properties, preserving them on reorder isn’t a nice-to-have — it’s the difference between a fulfilled order and a failed one.
