Our continued journey to bring the SeaClutch boat and RV picture frame holder to market!
GS1 is the official “issuer” of UPC codes. When you enroll with UPC, you have to decide how many different products you need under a given certification, and that determines the fee you pay. The picture at the top of this post displays their pricing guide.
The GS1 website takes you through their entire application process, explaining how UPC codes can help with inventory controls, case shipping and order fulfillment.
They also have a series of tutorials that explain every part of the process and why a GS1 issued UPC code is more important than a re-purposed code. When you buy a re-purposed UPC code you can use it to sell something (under most circumstances) on Ebay or Amazon, but it doesn’t have any lineage to your brand. I’ll cover that later.
One of the more interesting things is the estimator they built to assist you figure out how many different codes you actually need. For example, on the SeaClutch web site we have both standard and v-neck shirts for sale, and you can purchase each version in either white or blue. You might think would be 4 different UPC codes. In reality, you need a code for each size! We offer medium, large and XL for each shirt, so the total number of codes we would need for the shirts would be 3 for each size X 2 colors X types = 12 UPC codes. It is really important that you know this up front because one you have “purchased” as UPC prefix, you can’t add additional codes to it. Rather you have to purchase a different one for additional products.
Next – why you need a GS1 Issued UPC code.