by Myra Roldan

Created on: February 03, 2009   Last Updated: March 01, 2009

When starting a business, many times the last thing on your mind is figuring out the whole U.P.C./EAN-13 thing. The question that comes to many of our minds is, "Do I really need a U.P.C.?" Well.ahem.if you plan to get your products into a retail location, you will more than likely need a U.P.C. You will need one especially if you plan to get in with a national retailer.

U.P.C. stands for Universal Product Code. It that familiar bar code looking thing on almost every product you buy. It's made up of black lines and numbers not to be confused with a SKU (stock-keeping unit). Although obtaining a U.P.C. is completely voluntary, many large retailers will require vendors to obtain their own GS1 manufacturer ID number before they will consider doing business. As a vendor you will need a U.P.C. number for each of your product variety.

U.P.C.s consists of 12 numbers (EAN's have 13 this is the European version), along with several bars. The numbers represent:

The manufacturer's id which is assigned by GS1 (formerly UCC or Uniform Council Code), A product id assigned by the manufacturer, and A check digit.

You can get a U.P.C. by visiting http://www.uc-council.org/ and clicking on Need a U.P.C .Barcode? Getting your own company prefix will not be cheap. For new members, "the number of unique products you need to identify and your company's gross annual sales revenue determines the fee." (gs1-us). This means you will need to budget $500 or more to get your company prefix. For your membership fee with GS1-US, you get a unique GS1 Company Prefix and a U.P.C. Company Prefix that can be used to create Universal Product Code (U.P.C.) bar codes.

But what happens when your company can't afford this big expense?

There is simple solution. Purchase single U.P.C. number from a U.P.C. reseller. There are several places where you can obtain a subset of a U.P.C. number issued by another company, I'll provide a short list at the end of this article. If you take some time and read the information on the GS1-US site, you will read that GS-1 US considers this practice against their rules and inappropriate. HOWEVER, these rules were not codified in their license agreement until August 2002, this means that if a company sells a subset of numbers they obtained prior to August 2002, GS1 US has no recourse and can take no action. This is a loop whole that works to your advantage as a small business owner.

Single U.P.C. resellers are an excellent alternative to buying from GS1 US. These resellers

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