subject: Barcodes For Australian Retail Products [print this page] Barcodes are optical patterns designed to be read by machines utilising an optical scanner (barcode readers) and are used by most retailers. Each item in stock will then be able to be identified by its barcode to allow the systems to retrieve data regarding that product such as the price, any special offers that may be on. This means that in a retail store its possible for checkout assistants to quickly scan through multiple items and then have their checkout system calculate the price with no need to input data manually which can be slow and also prone to error. Meanwhile, online stores can similarly use these barcodes to quickly find and dispatch the relevant items which can be even more important with the large amounts of orders generated through popular online sites. Furthermore this can help with marketing and other aspects of promotion, and in tracking data regarding customer behaviour and preferences.
For this reason most stores require items to have a barcode in order for them to be sold in major chains throughout Australia and even online. Sites like Amazon even require barcodes now (unless you use the less productive market place option) in order to help them quickly and efficiently get their items out to their (and your) customers.
Thanks to the vast number of new technologies available to the general public such as POD (Print On Demand) publishing companies and 3D Printing, its now possible for anyone to start selling products online with minimal up-front investment. Meanwhile, perhaps spurred by the popularity of programmes such as Dragons Den and the increasingly open source nature of most industries, many other entrepreneurs are designing and ordering vast numbers of products from factories with the goal of selling them on to stores and so starting their own successful brands. In order to do follow either of these business models though you will need to order a barcode for each product line to stand a chance of being a success and getting into the major stores.
In Australia this has previously been a fairly complicated and expensive process however. Until recently, getting a barcode, required you to join an international barcodes organisation which would involve a joining fee, and then an annual fee for a bulk number of barcodes. You would then need to pay that annual fee every year simply in order to be able to use that barcode on existing products (as you often dont actually own it). If you only have one or two products however, as is the case for many small start ups who focus their attentions on a single killer app, this is obviously a large waste of money and far more complicated than need be. Even worse, these barcode companies only provided the barcode numbers (despite the heavy price), meaning that youd have to go elsewhere for your barcode images or develop them in-house (which obviously requires specialist software).
Recognising this problem, Barcodes Limited have made the process a lot simpler, and through barcodesaustralia.com, it is now possible to purchase barcodes numbers with their images (designed and included for free) cheaply and easily in bulk or individually. These are then yours for life with no additional cost, and you can even re-use old barcodes once your items are discontinued or sold out.
by: Rebecca Martinez
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