Barcodes

Helllo,

sorry if this is simplistic. I intend approaching a number of retailers/supermarkets with a new product that i will be selling in a few weeks. I am working with a designer on the packaging and im wondering can we create our own barcode or must each retailer give you one. also where do the figures come from? i think some are country of origin ,some producer number but am not sure about it.

Could anyone point me in the right direction.

Its a bit urgent.

Some info here :

Thanks for that. ive been quoted a pretty expensive figure and an annual licence fee of 100 euro which is prohibitive for me as i only have a few products. I googled it and found this company www.barcode1.ie but dont know much about their legitimacy. they seem to make a pretty convincing argument and for 49 euro once off i think its worth the gamble?
I will be getting them printed on boxes so if anyone has used them it would put my mind at ease. If you are buying 10,000 barcodes plus its really cheap but a couple are really expensive. the site above seems to make alot of business sense but im not sure if its coiste!! as dell boy would say. any advice?

money man said:

... I am working with a designer on the packaging and im wondering can we create our own barcode or must each retailer give you one. also where do the figures come from? ...

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If you are working with a specialist packaging designer, I'd be amazed if they don't know about obtaining UPCs / EANs and the codings for inners, outers, etc.

This outfit [broken link removed] seem good value for a once-off US$89 fee, but I know nothing about them other than they come up near the top in a number of searches.

BTW, if bar-coding is to be used you (and / or your packaging designer) need to figure out a way of testing before you start shipping. Your clients won't be happy if the bar-codes don't work with their scanners for ordering, receiving, stock-taking, check-out, etc.

I've used , Type in what you want and it displays the barcode on screen as a jpeg image. You can copy/paste it and send it to a printer.
Reguarding the content, if you look at a barcode there is a number written under it. If you scan the barcode into say a notepad/word document it inputs just those numbers.

If you're indeed working with a designer a jpeg image (mentioned above) is most definetely the wrong file to use. Vector based files are the only acceptable files to use during package design. The file allows you to scale to size without changing the barcode's scannability. You cannot just create a barcode you must buy one. In the past some of my clients have had gs1 barcode membership but mostly because they have in the thousands of products. I've always gone with http://www.qualityupc.com a US based company who has a really helpful design team, and their upc codes are only $29, with no other fees or setup etc.

Just be aware, your better off getting a Thermal Sticker Barcode. A lot of the printed ones can occasionally be problematic being read via scanner.

The GS1 website is the way to go, generally youll only need 1 barcode and your guaranteed that it wont conflict with other barcodes. (something which causes the EPOS DB guys in one place i work no end of pain)

Aside from that, most retailers also have the ability to generate internal barcodes for goods - eg tesco do it for non barcoded items like loose croissants etc.

This may be an option but possibly looks better if you have everything ready to go. Barcode conflicts do occur regularly, eg I do a bit of internal auditing and one problem that crops up is that some items are sold as somthing else when counter staff are under pressure.

Hi
Yes - we are based in lovely New Zealand - but supply barcodes internationally. We have hundreds of happy customers worldwide, including Ireland, UK & Europe.
We have only encountered problems with duplicate numbers once - yesterday actually. We found a US company using our barcode numbers on Amazon.com - once they were contacted, Amazon removed the offending numbers, and the US company responded quickly to acknowledge their mistake & renumber their products - all solved within 24 hours.
If you ask retailers about duplicate barcode numbers, they typically come from companies that are members of GS1 & have poor internal controls.
Our company is VERY careful to ensure we don;t sell duplicate numbers - our success is based on our reputation and customers confidence that they are purchasing unique numbers - this is all too important for us to risk making a mistake.
For more info, look at www.barcode1.ie
Regards
David

Smashbox said:

They seem to be based in New Zealand, not Ireland​

domain: barcode1.ie

descr: Barcodes Limited


person: David Allis

​

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