Why do I need a barcode although you sell online?
It seems at first a bit contradictory to sell products online and to buy a barcode. At the end of the day, your product will not be scan at the cashier when the end customer checks out. However, you will still need a number to identify your product and to register it on Marketplaces like Amazon, Ebay, Walmart… This number will be the same, no matter in which country or which marketplace you sell so even though the price seems high, it is an investment that is worth doing to avoid further problems down the line. Also if you would like to sell your product and use FBA fulfillment, you will need to identify your product with a barcode so that it doesn’t get mixed up at Amazon warehouse.
UPC? EAN? ASIN? SKU? What do I actually need?
What is the structure of the barcode?
Where to buy a barcode?
Barcodes are not cheap, especially when you get started with your E-commerce. However, buying some barcodes from unreliable sources can cost you more along the line than just buying them for GS1 (none profit organization standardizing barcode worldwide).
We have heard of many horror stories about sellers who tried to save a few $ on barcode and ended up not being able to sell for months.
- UPC code issues
- UPC codes were used by other seller
- I JUST bought 25 new barcodes from BarcodesTalk and I’m getting this error when I try to add a new product.
So be very careful before buying your barcode from any unreliable source and don’t forget, this is just some fixed cost, see it as an investment to launch your product.
One barcode vendor that worth being mentioned is legalbarcode.com. Their price is slightly cheaper than on GS1 but if you want to be sure that your barcode will be always accepted by any marketplace, just buy them from Gs1
How many barcodes do I need?
You need to buy one barcode for each variation of your product. For instance, let say you sell white and black tee-shirt in 3 different size: S, M, L. You will have in total 6 variations of your product: white S, M, L and black S, M, L. Therefore you should buy at least 6 units.
How much does it cost?
If you only need one barcode, you can buy it for $30 here.
You can check the latest pricing of GS1 here
So to take our previous example, if you need to sell 6 units you can purchase 10 barcodes for $250. If you plan to 30 products or more, it becomes more interesting to buy 100 GTIN as the price for 100 is the same a buying 3 times 10 GTIN.
If you want to sell on Amazon FBA and you don’t have UPC barcode, you will need to pay $0.50 per unit so for 10 products, you will be better off with GS1 after selling 500 units, for 100 products after 1500 units…
Also, keep in mind, you need on barcode to register your company location. So if you plan to buy 10 barcodes, you will have only 9 available for your products.
How to buy barcodes on GS1 ?
If you are ready to purchase more than 1 barcode, you need to purchase a company prefix which will be the same for all your product. Select on the right the number of barcodes you need, usually, you will need only one prefix.
Once you are done, you can access GA1 Data Hub and register your location:
Once this is done, you can register your product. You can either register each product individually or use a bulk upload.
To create one product, go to Product > Create and input the mandatory fields:
The GTIN will be automatically assigned. Don’t worry, if you do any mistake, you can still change and manage your product description later.
If you want to create barcode as bulk for several products, you can do this by uploading and excel spreadsheet.
First, you need to download the right number of GTIN you need:
- Go to Import and click on Download Import Template
Once this is done, you need to click on Download All Available GTINs and select how many GTIN you want to register.
Finally, you need to fill out the template:
- Action: Create
- GS1CompanyPrefix: is the prefix you got previously, you can find it under location
- GTIN is from the second sheet you downloaded
- Packaging level depends on how units are sold
- IsVariable: depends on whether the size change for each product. For instance, if you sell S, M and L t-shirts, IsVariable should be No because each S t-shirt has the same size. If you sell some cheese that needs to be cut and therefore don’t have always the same weight then IsVariable should be Yes.
- IsPurchasable: should be Yes unless you don’t sell a product anymore.
Once this is done, you can upload the file. You just registered the GTIN for your product, you can now use this GTIN to list your product on any marketplace like Amazon, Walmart or Ebay…
How to print your barcode from GS1 ?
If you want to print your barcode to identify your product, you can do this in Gs1.
Go to Product > Manage and click on the product your want to print the barcode for. Then go to the last tab and select the type (UPC-A or Gs1 Databar Stacked Omnidirectional) and the size of your barcode (depending on the size of the product. Large barcode are easier to scan)
How to print your barcode for Amazon?
If you want to sell your product through FBA, you can print the barcode directly in Amazon Seller Central after listing your product and choosing Fulfilment by Amazon.
Go to your Amazon Seller Central Account > Inventory > Manage Inventory and select in the drop-down menu of the product you want to label: “print item labels”. If you don’t see this option make sure that you choose FBA for your fulfillment. You can again choose the best-looking size of your barcode.
