Barcodes – Where Products Come From

This viral email has been going around for a couple of years that is mainly untrue. The email says that you can tell where a product has been manufactured by the UPC or EAN barcode. This tutorial will help you understand how to read a barcode.

Bar Codes – Where Products Come From

If it starts with a 0 – 9 it is from USA or Canada. Read on down for the other countries codes. Very helpful information. I checked the cans and cereal in the cupboard and they all started with 0 – 9. This makes it very easy.

HOW TO READ BAR CODES…(very good to know)
I am going to watch those bar codes a LOT more now… I am busy reading the ingredients..

Boy.. shopping is a full time job!!!

ALWAYS READ THE LABELS ON THE PRODUCTS YOU BUY–NO MATTER WHAT THE FRONT OF THE BOX OR PACKAGE SAYS, TURN IT OVER AND READ THE BACK—CAREFULLY!

With all the food and other products now coming from China, it is best to make sure you read label at the store and especially Walmart when buying food or other products.

Many products no longer show where they were made, only give where the distributor is located. It is important to read the bar code to track it’s origin.

How to read Bar Codes …. interesting!

This may be useful to know when grocery shopping, if it’s a concern to you.

GREAT WAY TO “BUY USA & CANADA AND NOT FROM CHINA!!

The whole world is concerned about China-made “black hearted goods”. Can you differentiate which one is made in Taiwan or China ?

If the first 3 digits of the barcode are 690, 691 or 692, the product is MADE IN CHINA.

471 is Made in Taiwan .

This is our right to know, but the government and related departments never educate the public, therefore we have to RESCUE ourselves.

Nowadays, Chinese businessmen know that consumers do not prefer products “MADE IN CHINA “, so they don’t show from which country it is made.

However, you may now refer to the barcode – remember if the first 3 digits are:

690-692 … then it is MADE IN CHINA
00 – 09 … USA & CANADA
30 – 37 FRANCE
40 – 44 GERMANY
471 … Taiwan
49 … JAPAN
50 … UK

BUY USA & CANADIAN MADE by watching for “0″ at the beginning of the number.

We need every boost we can get! Pass this on to everybody on your E-Mail Contact List!!

If the government won’t help us, we MUST help ourselves.

The Real Story….

EAN and UPC Barcodes all originate from the GS1.

Whether you purchase a barcode prefix from the GS1 or purchase a barcode from a company like Nationwide Barcode, the barcode will indicate the country where the prefix originated regardless of where that company has their products manufactured.

The GS1 is a corporation, they are not a government agency. The GS1 originated in the US and are now in every major country in the world.

All UPC-A barcodes (12 digit barcodes) originate from either the US or Canada and do not show the country code in the human readable numbers (the numbers below the barcode). If it’s a 12 digit number, its a UPC Barcode and the company received their barcode prefix or barcode number either in the US or in Canada.

UPC Barcodes numbers look like this:
X XXXXX YYYYY Z
X XXXXX XYYYY Z
X XXXXX XXYYY Z
X XXXXX XXXYY Z

The Xs represent the prefix that the company received from the GS1. If a company purchases a barcode from a company like Nationwide Barcode or another barcode subdivider, that company owns the prefix.

The Ys are left up to the owner of the barcode prefix to generate at their discretion.
In the first example YYYYY can be 00000 through 99999. Once they run out of barcode numbers, they need to get another prefix and start over with that one.

The majority of POS systems (Point of Sale – Electronic Cash Registers) in the US and Canda can only read UPC numbers. They are not set up to read EAN numbers that are used in the rest of the world. Products that are sold in Europe, Australia, Asia or other parts of the world are usually imported by an American or Canadian company, are private labeled or relabeled and include a UPC barcode.

Elsewhere in the world, EAN barcodes are used. Originally used in Europe, EAN originally was an abbreviation for ‘European Article Number’ after EAN barcodes started being used in other countries it now stands for ‘International Article Number’

Using the same example as above, a British company selling products in any countries excluding US and Canada will have barcodes that look like this

5 0XXXXX YYYYYZ
5 0XXXXX XYYYYZ
5 0XXXXX XXYYYZ
5 0XXXXX XXXYYZ

The best way to determine whether or not something is made in the United States or Canada is to look at the packaging for an indication of where the product was made, visit the American Business First Website or to contact the manufacturer.

For the entire list of Country Codes and to learn more about Barcode UPC and EAN, read or download a free copy of Barcodes Demystified here: http://www.nationwidebarcode.com/Barcodes-Demystified/

Message from Nationwide Barcode President/Founder, Phil Peretz

Message from founder and President, Phil Peretz

We appreciate our clients and hope that you will consider us for all of your EAN and UPC barcode needs. We want to make the purchase and ownership of UPC Barcodes and EAN Barcodes to be easy as possible for businesses of all sizes.

We pride ourselves on being the most trusted and preferred vendor for barcodes anywhere. We provide 100% legal bar codes to businesses worldwide and whether you need 1 barcode for a single product to be sold at a local retailer, a batch for all of your products to be sold nationwide at stores like Whole Foods, Lowes, Costco, Fryes Electronics or other chain stores or you need thousands of barcodes for selling on Amazon, Google Merchant or other internet website we will treat you like a VIP.

There is a lot of information on the internet about barcodes…some of it is fact and some of it is misleading. We take a no-nonsense approach to business and pride ourselves on working with you every step of the way. Don’t be fooled by the so-called official sites or “recommended by the Washington Post” guys….next to the GS1, we are the largest providers of UPC barcodes all with 100% customer satisfaction. We guarantee that our numbers have never been previously used nor recycled. When you buy from us, these numbers belong to you and become an asset of your organization.

In addition to top-notch service, we also send you a link to download a copy of my eBook, Barcodes Demystified(tm) with every order to make this a painless process….and we provide free phone and email technical support.

We have a video that we have produced that is a very comprehensive tutorial. You can find this video on our home page toward the bottom of the page.

We are commerce, SEO, marketing, graphics and merchandising professionals. Our sister company is Media Media Inc, a long standing member Visual Media Alliance and Printing Industries of America. We know how important it is to get high quality graphics, guaranteed unique barcode numbers and an attention to detail not found anywhere else.

We also know that you need these quickly, so we have automated our site allowing you to get your barcodes within seconds of placing your order.

If you have any questions, please feel free to call our sales department or e-mail us directly at info@nationwidebarcode.com

Beware of buying a Cheap UPC barcode.

Are you looking to buy a cheap UPC barcode?

There are a lot of companies on the internet that sell barcodes. Many of them give you truthful information and there are a handful that are quite deceiving using such terminology as Official Site or Official Source, etc.

Be aware of what you are getting yourself into when you decide to make your purchase. If a company mentions that they have to pay renewal fees, they are in breach of their agreement with the GS1 (formerly known as the Uniform Code Council). Only companies that hold a valid prefix that predates August of 2002 can subdivide their pool of barcodes and sell them.

Sometimes Buying a Cheap UPC Barcode isn’t so cheap. There are companies that have convoluted terms and conditions hidden on various pages eluding to the fact that once they sell you Cheap UPC barcodes they will then charge you a monthly subscription fee. There are companies will accept barcodes back which means that there can be multiple vendors using the same barcode.

There are only two ways to get a barcode. You enter into an agreement with the GS1 which can be a sizeable amount of money or you go Nationwide Barcode or a similar company.

Barcodes are a very important aspect to getting your product to market. It can be very expensive to learn after the fact that your provider didn’t have legal right to sell you barcodes or your barcodes have been assigned to another company. We are the least expensive legitimate barcode provider on the internet.

Nationwide Barcode: www.nationwidebarcode.com

All about UPC Barcodes

This informative video will explain how barcodes work. Please feel free to contact us if you have any additional questions.

How many Bar Codes do I need?

UPC and EAN Barcodes are used for both conveying pricing information to the Point of Sale Systems in stores (electronic cash registers) and maintaining inventory for the retailer.

You need as many barcodes as you have products or variations of products.

If you are selling shoes, you would need one unique barcode for each style, color and size.
If you are selling soft drinks, you would need one for the 12 oz. can, the 12 oz. bottle, the six or twelve-packs, and the liters of each flavor.

Every variation of a product needs a unique barcode.

If you only have one product and you are manufacturing one or 1,000,000 – each piece will have the same barcode number.

How does a bar code work?

When you sell your products to a wholesaler or retailer (Amazon, Target, Borders Books, Autozone, etc.), they will have you supply them or will have you fill out a product information sheet.

The things that you put on that sheet is your company and product information including the UPC/EAN code number for each product.

Then, the wholesaler or retailer enters this information in their information systems computer. This computer ties into the registers at the front of the store. The cashier scans your item and the information comes up. Every time an item is scanned and sold, it deducts the number of items sold from their inventory.

Shipping Container Barcodes

Shipping Container Barcode

A Shipping Container Barcode is used on the outside of our master cartons and recommended or required by many mid-to large retailers who are automating their incoming inventory processes The UPC Shipping Container Symbol (SCS) is very similar to the Universal Product Code. This symbology is called interleaved 2 of 5 (ITF).

The major difference between this barcode and a UPC barcode is the lines at the top and bottom of the barcode. These are called Bearer Bars. The Barcode is comprised of 4 groups.

1) – Packaging Indicator. We recommend that you assign a number ranging from 1 to 7 for the first digit. If you have a container that has 12 and another container that has 36, you assign different numbers to each. This is very flexible.

2) The next number is a ZERO. This is required.

3) The next 11 digits are the first 11 digits from the UPC barcode used for the item inside.

4) The final (14th digit) is a check digit.

We can create the graphics for you inexpensively and quickly: http://nationwidebarcode.com/other-services/shipping-container-barcodes/

What is a Coupon Code?

The coupon code starts with a 5 to indicate that it is a coupon, then the next 5 numbers are positions two through six of the company prefix, the next three digits are the family code. These are assigned by the manufacturer to group products within a family of products. A family would be shoes – all sizes or colors, Vitamin Water (different flavors), etc. The next two numbers are the value code. In the case of the example here, 01 means buy two, get one free, and then, the last number is a check-digit

If you want more information about coupon codes, go to www.couponpros.org

Barcode Leading and Ending Digits

The first digit of the manufacturer’s identification number is special. It is called the number system character. The following table shows you what different number system characters mean

0: Standard UPC number 1: Reserved 2: Random weight items (fruits, meat, vegetables, etc. 3: Pharmaceuticals 4: In store marketing for retailers (a store can set up unique barcodes for themselves, but no other store will be able to read them) 5: Coupons 6, 7 Standard UPC number 8: Reserved 9: Reserved

The last digit of the UPC code is called a check digit. In the case of our example, 7 This digit lets the scanner (and the computer attached to it) know if the number was scanned properly or not.

The first 11 digits are a combination of the prefix and the numbers assigned to a particular product. The final check digit is a mathematical algorithm weaving through the first 11-digits

The number at the far right is the check digit. In this case, it’s a 7. If you want to compute the check digit for a UPC-A Barcode in Excel, do the following: Put the 11-digit number you want to compute the check digit for in cell A1.

Put this formula in cell B1 (you may need to remove the space where before the 1st and 2nd line)

=10MOD(MID($A1,2,1)+MID($A1,4,1)+MID($A1,6,1)+MID($A1,8,1)+MID($A1,10,1)+(MID($A1,1,1)+MID($A1,3,1)+
MID($A1,5,1)+MID($A1,7,1)+MID($A1,9,1)+MID($A1,11,1))*3,10)

Put this formula in cell C1: =if($B1=10,0,$B1)

Put this formula in cell D1: =CONCATENATE(A1,C1)

The number in C1 is the check digit, the number in cell D1 is the complete barcode number with check digit.

There is no hidden data built into a barcode, there is no pricing information, there is no product information. The bars represent only the 12-digit number. The way that it works is: The manufacture affixes the barcode to the product. The retailer inputs information about the product into their back-end computer that controls and communicated to all of the store’s Point of Sales systems (cash register). The customer brings up their purchase to the front counter, the item is scanned and the POS system communicates to the back-end system pulling the information about the product. The info is printed on the sales receipt, the price is charged and then, the items are deducted from the store’s inventory.

Introduction to Barcodes

There are two types of barcodes for retail products, UPC – Universal Product Code and EAN — European Article Number. We are going to focus on the 12-digit UPC-A barcodes since they are the most common and these are easily readable everywhere.

Wherever you go, the grocery store, department store, on line at Amazon or your own refrigerator or pantry, you’ll find that everything that you purchase has a UPC barcode on it. Sometimes they are a little hard to find, but if you flip the package around, it’s there.

A barcode is an optical machine-readable representation of data. The first use of barcodes was to label railroad cars, but they were not commercially successful until they were used to automate supermarket checkout systems, a task in which they have become almost universal.

Systems such as RFID are attempting to change the standard, but the simplicity, universality and low cost of printed barcodes has limited the role of these other systems. It costs less than one-half of one cent to implement a printed barcode compared to seven to thirty cents to implement a passive RFID.*

George Joseph Laurer developed the Universal Product Code in 1973. As an engineer at IBM he was asked to develop the pattern used for the Universal Product Code (UPC-A Barcode).

GS1, which used to be called the Uniform Code Council (UCC) is the provider of UPC barcode prefixes. A company goes to the GS1, they purchase the prefix and then are responsible for the self-assignment of the identification numbers that go after the prefix.

The Barcode prefix, the first 6, 7, 8 or 9 digits, is called a UPC Barcode Prefix The company who has been assigned the UPC Barcode Prefix is responsible for the assignment of the next digits (making up a total of eleven digits) to their products.

Then, as the barcode number is designated, the last number is mathematically determined through an algebraic equation to create a checksum (check digit). This check digit is the twelfth or final digit. When you join GS1, you get a prefix certificate along with your start-up package.

As far as we know, there are only a small handful of companies that require a copy of this certificate: Kroger’s, Walmart/Sam’s Club and Macy’s.

Unless you are specifically going to do business with these three chains, you have the option of using a company that is legally able to subdivide their barcode prefix.

The GS1 maintains the database of UPC Prefixes. It is our opinion that, although this database is conceptually a great idea, and has to be maintained, it is virtually ignored, unknown and unused.

Retailers input information from product data sheets filled out or given to them by their suppliers. The supplier gives the retailer the product information including the barcode based on the complete 12 digit code and the retailer enters it into their point of sale system.

There are no formal centralized databases of product barcodes. Using the mathematical formula x=1110 there are potentially 10 billion products that can be represented by UPC-A barcodes at any given time.

This, more than anything else, explains why there is no centralized database of products. No one has the bandwidth, energy or resources to catalog something this massive.

There is nothing programmed into a UPC barcode. The bars only represent the 12 digit number that is the barcode. The retailer associates these 12 numbers with the product information. This information is pulled from the retailer’s database when a product is scanned.

You have two choices when you need to buy a barcode or block of barcodes. You purchase directly from the GS1 (They charge a minimum of $750.00 plus a yearly renewal fee) or you purchase from us or a company like Nationwide Barcode (www.nationwidebarcode.com) .

Nationwide Barcode and similar companies received their prefixes in the 90’s or early 2000’s

In 2002 GS1 attempted to codify the agreement with UPC Barcode prefix holders which included renewal fees. The codified agreement included rules that were in the form of a contract which included not being able to subdivide a barcode number. Prior to this, there were no signed agreements with any prefix holders including Multicom Publishing.

The GS1 decided to change the way they were doing business. They started sending out renewal notices insisting that the prefix holders pay renewal fees and agree to the new terms and conditions.

Ultimately a class action suit was levied against the GS1 in the state of Washington and the GS1 lost. All prefix owners prior to August 28, 2002 became exempt to the GS1’s renewal fees and new codified agreement.

Quoting the UCC Settlement web site:

This Settlement provides that companies who became members of UCC before August 28, 2002, are not obligated to pay membership renewal fees to UCC to maintain membership as a condition for their use of Company Prefixes issued to them by UCC, or as a condition for Basic Membership Benefits as defined in the Class Settlement Agreement. Class members who have paid a renewal fee to UCC are entitled to compensation from a $3,895,000 settlement fund. The settlement also provides that the “licensing agreement,” which accompanied UCC renewal fee invoices, is null and void as to those who became members in UCC before August 28, 2002. **

Quoting George Laurer, “Often I am asked if a person that purchases a number from a subset seller will have legal problems in the future. Again, I am not a lawyer, but if the number was originally assigned to the seller by the UCC before August 2002, the answer is no problem.”**** Nationwide Barcode is one of the companies deemed legitimate by George Laurer. www.laurerupc.com

The decision to go with the GS1 or Nationwide Barcode (or a company similar to Nationwide Barcode) is a matter of economies of scale. GS1 charges an upfront fee and a yearly renewal fee based upon the number of 12-digit barcode numbers that you need along with your company’s revenue. The more you make, the more the barcode prefix will cost you, and this amount can increase over time. We believe that the GS1 is a great organization, they provide a tremendous service, however, for a small business with a limited budget, a Barcode Subdividing company makes the most sense.

* Text provided by Wikipedia and is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barcode ** http://www.ibcaweb.org/ucc-settlement.htm *** http://bellsouthpwp.net/l/a/laurergj/UPC/renufee.html (page on George Laurer’s website) **** http://www.laurerupc.com (George Laurer’s site)