Need to buy a barcode number

[jont]

I need to buy a single EAN13 barcode number and looks a bit of minefield. Apparently there is a single UK issuer www.gs1uk.org but has steep joining / membership fees for a single number. Everyone else look like resellers with some dodgy sites and lack of any real guidance.

Does anyone have any experience they can share or point me to someone reputable where I buy a number.

Cheers

[Mike Hughes]

These guys look genuine and reputable but I haven't used them.

http://ezupc.com/

$20 one-off for a single UPC / EAN13 code.

I guess you have to decide how important the code is and what the impact would be if you had to change to another one in the future if anything were to go wrong.

Mike

[Duncan Rounding]

I'd rather go with this crowd - even though they're in NZ:
http://www.barcode1.co.uk

[jont]

Looked at the NZ site - you go to the PayPal site first after agreeing to "it may or may not work but all our customers say it does" terms and pay up front before you enter any details about what you are wanting

[jont]

Nadge - just had a reply back from a site advising "check with the supermarkets you are distributing to if they are GS1 Alliance members. If the supermarket are GS1 alliance partners then you will have no option but to become a GS1 Member to receive your EAN13 numbers."

Jobs for the boys?

Best dig out the company credit card and join up

[Mike Hughes]

There's a good discussion on barcodes here; http://www.ukbusinessforums.co.uk/fo...ad.php?t=82463

It seems pretty straightforward. If you just want a few then the resellers look fine as long as you aren't selling to Walmart, krogers or Macy's in the US (amazon are fine) and that seems to be because the strict companies are founding members of the GS1 group that issues the company prefix numbers.

GS1 don't like the resellers because they are operating under contracts agreed before 2002 when GS1 introduced anual fees and banned reselling. GS1 tried to take the resllers to court and lost having to make quite a large payout as a result.

Even they guy from IBM who created the whole UPC code thing says the genuine resellers are OK so you shouldn't run into any problems.

Mike

[jont]

Cheers for that Mike... muddied the waters even further

We are pitching at 2 national supermarkets and the new boxes need an EAN13 barcode as part of the outer box design. I am guessing they will be demanding GS1 compliance so as they work as expected across there tills.

I will get the buyer to ask the questions about GS1 but can guess the reply.

Thanks for all the pointers - much appreciated.

[Mike Hughes]

We are pitching at 2 national supermarkets and the new boxes need an EAN13 barcode as part of the outer box design. I am guessing they will be demanding GS1 compliance so as they work as expected across there tills.

The codes from the resellers are GS1 compliant and will work identically to codes you would issue yourself.

The only difference is that if you are a GS1 licensee then you have your own company prefix and can issue your own product codes within that subset.

The resellers sell codes from their own subset for you to use.

The only difference is that if someone goes go back to the issuing body to see who the subset of codes are issued to they will find a company name other than yours. But there is no master database of product codes and all the retailers will use whatever data you provide them in their product database.

Having said that, the £100 joining fee plus £100 per year (depending on turnover) to join GS1 UK isn't that bad and is probably the least of your worries once you start supplying the supermarkets.

Mike

[completerookie]

I've been doing hours and hours of investigation into GS1 over the last few months relating to tracking and tracing of foodstuff (and other non-food things as an offshoot).

They have just released a new DataPool - thats the database that says what the barcode actually means and who it belongs to. The new datapool is going to be fed from all the other datapools around the uk, so it should end up as the definitive source of data. as you can imagine, supermarkets and the like are going to end up reading from GS1 (one source) rather than multiple GS1 datapool look-alikes

Officially, tracability needs you to track up the source chain (from your supplier) and down the chain to your customers. Its becoming more of a absolute requirement with the foodstuff, and will slowly become a requirement on other items ( for instance: they want the tracabilty of contaminated (lead) paint)

Once a barcode has been issued, the datapools have an obligation to maintain that source for ten years after the product/barcode is dropped

again, once you have a GS1 registration, you can create as many barcodes as you have products (even those not going to the supermarket) at a reasonable price.

If the difference isn't great, I'd definately go the GS1 route, afterall, they are "the standard"
All of DGS group (curry's, etc) and Macro and loads of others use GS1

as a side note, I also did an awful lot of work on north-sea fish produce, one company took 15million euro's in grants from the EU to set up "their definitive trace database" for all european fishing and then last xmas, forgot to renew their domain, and every link in google goes to the clever little man who snapped up the domain"

kev

[jont]

Thanks Kevin. It is chocolates so traceability is going to be an issue.

I think the safest route is going to be GS1 as don't want any excuses from the big boys down the line to wiggle out of anything.

[completerookie]

It is chocolates so traceability is going to be an issue

its not as clear cut as that (as you can imagine when 'authorities' get involved), for instance, if you run a butchers, and you sell meat to "other companies", (restaurants etc), then you have a current duty to follow the chain up one level (your supplier) and within your organisation (mixing bits together to form another product) and also down one level (who your customers are) whereas the meat that you sell "over the counter" is not subject to the same 'down one level' tracability. - it would be unreasonable to start noting down all the names and address's of your over-the-counter customers.

There is a magical date of 2014 coming up, whereby the authorities expect more effective tracabiltity. At the moment, most authorities will accept your invoices from the supplier as the 'upward trace' and the invoices to your customers as you 'downward trace'

the closer we get to 2014, the more tracability will become an issue.

as soon as you get into 'real food mixing' (pre-prepared meals) then they want more tracability. and authorities are quite hot on that.

in december 2008, there was a major issue with contaminated feed. In this case, Only 8% of a pig herd exposed to contaminated feed, but with the accepted
level of traceability in pork industry meant that all Irish pork & pork
products sold (regardless of the pig-herd source) from 1st Sept were recalled. - it was a massive, expensive exercise because no one could trace the single herd accurately

Foot and mouth, avian flu, BSE have all made authorities think more of tracability.

Bottom line, personally, I'd stick with the big boys (GS1) - its not a lot more money, your supermarkets may end up insisting in the long run, but as the rest of the posting suggests, you may need to start tighten your tracability, especially with whats coming.

hope it helps a bit (don't want to scare too much) .

kev

[Jan]

We used them and I think it was £99 a year, we used them for listing on Amazon and after a while Amazon just allocated ASINs to our products and so we didn't need to keep the subscription up.