Hey Vincent,

It’s exciting to hear you’re interested in registering a barcode for one of your products! You can purchase barcodes through GS1 no matter where in the world you’re located. I hope this helps!

Cheers,
Jared

Hey Matthew,

Thanks for stopping by! To answer your question, it sounds like you may need to register a company prefix with GS1. The reason for this is I assume you have many different designs, so each of them will need their own unique barcode. However, you say that the bookstore you’re selling to is very small, so they might not need you to provide a UPC. Using officially registered GS1 barcodes are required at larger retailers, but small mom and pop shops may not ask for them.

When you purchase barcodes from GS1 you purchase a Global Trade Item Number (GTIN) and that GTIN is then encoded into a barcode. The GTINs are a way to identify your product. Think of a GTIN like a trademark for your greeting cards. They will guarantee their authenticity to retailers. GTINs don’t carry any product information within them, including pricing. So for example, if you were to buy GTINs for your greeting cards the bookstore could look them up in the GS1 database and see they are registered to your business, but they wouldn’t be able to see anything else about the product.

For your greeting cards to be connected to product information (including price) the bookstore would need to put your product information into whatever system they are using (for example inFlow) and link the barcode to the product.

I hope this helps!

Cheers,
Jared

Hey Jean,

GS1 registered barcodes are for business owners to register their product in a global data base. It doesn’t have any defined value added to the barcode. The barcode authenticates the product. For example every model of the iPhone has a unique UPC code. This allows various retailers to ensure the product is genuine when selling it to their customers. I hope this helps.

Cheers,
Jared