The Story Behind It

Built for hoopers,
by hoopers.

When Hoopologie launched in Boulder, Colorado in 2013, one of the first problems we set out to solve was a simple but genuinely frustrating one: hoopmakers and tape buyers kept wasting material because the math was either tedious to do by hand or just not something most people thought to do at all.

So we built the calculator. A free tool — no login, no paywall, no strings — that anyone could use to figure out their hoop dimensions and exactly how much tape their next project would need. It went up early in Hoopologie’s life and has been running ever since.

Over a decade later it is still one of the most visited pages on the site. Hoopers from more than 40 countries use it to plan builds, order the right amount of tape, teach new hoopmakers to think in circumferences, and just answer the fundamental question: what size is my hoop, really?

It costs nothing. It always will. That’s what the hoop community deserves.

Milestones

• 1999 Hoopologie’s founder Melinda Rider handcrafts her first hoops from irrigation tubing and decorative tape from her father’s business, Identi-Tape.
• 2013 Hoopologie founded in Boulder, Colorado. The Hoop & Tape Calculator goes live as a free community resource from the start.
• 2015+ The calculator is cited, linked, and recommended across the global hoopmaking community — from tutorials and blog posts to convention handouts.
• Today Still free. Still accurate. Still one of the most useful tools a hoopmaker can bookmark. Used by artists in 40+ countries worldwide.