Show notes
In the world of e-commerce and retail, barcodes play a crucial role in product identification and inventory management. But what lies beyond those familiar lines and numbers? Join us as we dive into the fascinating world of barcodes with an exclusive interview with Michelle Covey, a leading expert from GS1 US.Michelle shares insights into her current endeavors and sheds light on the latest innovations in barcodes. We discuss whether Walmart adheres to the same GTIN requirements as other retailers and explore the concept of GTIN hijacking scenarios. For Amazon sellers, we uncover strategies to avoid GTIN problems. Additionally, we address the varying pricing ranges of GS1 licenses across different countries and provide guidance for those who purchased second-hand barcodes. Tune in for an informative and engaging discussion!If you’re interested to learn more, here are additional resources talked about in this episode and provided by GS1 US: Homepage – https://www.gs1us.org/ Estimate How Many GTINs You Need – https://www.gs1us.org/tools/barcode-estimator/home GS1 US Podcast – https://next-level-supply-chain-with-gs1us.podcastpage.io/ In episode 475 of the Serious Sellers Podcast, Bradley and Michelle discuss: 01:39 – What Is Michelle Up To These Days? 02:24 – Is There Innovation In Barcodes? 03:03 – Does Walmart Have Same GTIN Requirements? 06:05 – GS1 US Answers All Your Burning Questions! 07:53 – What Is A GTIN Hijacking Scenario 09:50 – How To Avoid GTIN Problems With Amazon 13:13 – Why Amazon Does Not Like Barcodes Outside GS1 Or Resellers 14:00 – Why GS1 Have Different Pricing Ranges For Other Countries? 16:09 – What If I Bought Second-Hand Barcode? 18:10 – What GS1 Barcode Or GTIN Fields Does Amazon Look At? 20:31 – What Are GS1 License Owner Certificates? 21:35 – Does A Brand Name Change Need A New GTIN? 23:28 – Common Error Messages Amazon Sellers Get From Their Barcodes 25:24 – Always Think About Your Packaging Strategy 27:30 – Upcoming GS1 Barcode Innovations 29:43 – Michelle’s Healthy Habits And Habits Outside Work 31:20 – How To Reach Out To GS1 US & Michelle Covey ► Instagram: instagram.com/serioussellerspodcast► Free Amazon Seller Chrome Extension: https://h10.me/extension► Sign Up For Helium 10: https://h10.me/signup (Use SSP10 To Save 10% For Life)► Learn How To Sell on Amazon: https://h10.me/ft► Watch The Podcasts On Youtube: youtube.com/@Helium10/videos Transcript Bradley Sutton: If you’re a serious seller, you know you need an official barcode from GS1. But there’s error messages that come up here and there, and questions about what Amazon can really see from GS1 and other concerns. So we actually invited an official rep from GS1 to answer all these questions. How cool is that? Pretty cool, I think. Bradley Sutton: Are you afraid of running out of inventory before your next shipment comes in? Or maybe you’re on the other side and you worry about having too much inventory, which could cap you out at the Amazon warehouses, or even cost you storage fees? Stay on top of your inventory by using our robust inventory management tool. You can take advantage of our advanced forecasting algorithms, manage your three PL inventory, create pos for your suppliers, create replenishment, shipments, and more. All from inside inventory management by Helium 10. For more information, go to h10.me/inventorymanagement. And don’t forget, you can sign up for a free Helium 10 account from there, or you can get 10% off for life by using our special podcast code SSP10. Hello everybody, and welcome to another episode of the Serious Sellers podcast by Helium 10. I’m your host, Bradley Sutton, and this is the show that’s a completely BS free, unscripted and unrehearsed organic conversation about serious strategies for serious sellers of any level in the e-commerce world. And back for the second time, we’ve got somebody who indirectly helps millions of sellers out there potentially. Michelle from GS1. How’s it going? Michelle: It’s going great. Thank you for having me today, Bradley. Bradley Sutton: Awesome. Awesome. Now we’re not gonna go too much into your backstory this time. If you guys are interested, make sure to check out episode 357. All right, so episode 357 was the first time that she was on the podcast. And we talked about, you know, the history of, of GS1, and we talked a lot about some, some basics, you know, like what’s the difference between GTIN and EIN and a whole bunch of cool stuff. But I wanted to just, first of all, just what have you been up to? Like, how’s the last couple years been since you’ve been on the show? Michelle: Well, you know, always busy. I think there’s always plenty of work to do. And I’ve changed roles. I’m now in our innovation team, so, but I still help support a lot of the Amazon community, but I’m also working– Bradley Sutton: All right, hold on. I gotta ask. Barcodes are barcodes. How do you innovate that? That sounds like a really tough job to have. Like, all right, barcodes are completely set now. We need you to innovate something cool. Michelle: No, you could always innovate. I think that, well, we can take that discussion too, but like where industry is going with barcodes, you’ve seen the linear barcode on your products. They’ve been around for 50 years and they’ve been working great, but you start to see 2D barcodes, QR codes on things why not make that the barcode that goes beep up the checkout stand? So we’ve been working on that too. So yeah, I can talk more about that if you want. Bradley Sutton: Now that you mentioned that I saw something interesting the other day. It was like these crazy, I’ve seen, you know, QR codes that have some like logos, you know, embedded in it, but now it’s like, looks like art, but it’s really a bar. Like it’s really a QR code. I’m like, how is that even possible? But okay. There is innovation barcodes, I guess. There probably wasn’t for, for a few decades, but now, now we’re getting back back there. You know, right, right before the call, you know, you had mentioned Walmart, and so I just want, you know, let’s just start off there. One thing that’s interesting, you know, about you know, when we’re talking about barcodes, I know just from my limited experience, you know, obviously on Amazon, you know, I have tons of experience. I usually actually put an FNSKU, obviously everything needs a GS1 barcode, you know, for the backend. But I put the Amazon FNSKU sticker you know, over it when I send it to Amazon. But when it comes to Walmart, it’s actually the opposite. Now I have to actually cover up, if I had, like, if I had printed my Amazon FNSKU I actually have to cover it up with the original UPC. Now, Bradley Sutton: What is your experience like, you know, like do you, do you see a lot more sellers you know, selling on, on Walmart? And does Walmart have the same kind of very strict rules like Amazon does about the GS1? Michelle: So, good questions. I think, and this is something we always talk about when we are talking to the seller community, especially new companies that are just starting out. First of all, always identify your product with the GS1 GTIN that global trade item number, that’s what gets encoded into the barcode. So we talk more about GTIN but again, if you look into listen to that pressed episode, we, we interchange ’em with barcodes very quickly. But so get your, your number. And that’s what’s used on Amazon, but it’s also used on Walmart. So Walmart has the same GTIN requirements for identifying your product. But their barcode requirements are the traditional GS1 barcode. So having that UPC barcode, or if you did assign an EIN, that EIN barcode to your product, so they want that one to go, you know, beef at the checkout. Amazon doesn’t really have, in most cases, a traditional checkout. Everything’s done on the marketplace. And so they use that FNSKU for like their just fulfillment process in their warehouse. Michelle: Yeah. Okay. But for most part, we always say, you know, again, sellers usually start on Amazon and don’t think about it, and they’ll just do the FNSKU and then they won’t think about, well, if I am expanding into other channels, I now need this other barcode. So it is a challenge. We’re hoping that Amazon will use more GS1 barcodes in their fulfillment center because it does cause that dichotomy among how you, you know, barcode your products, whether it’s for Amazon or for most other traditional retailers that use the GS1 system. Bradley Sutton: Now, personally, I have never applied for a GTIN exemption, you know, to get, I mean, like, I just don’t understand the, the point, like even if I’m not selling on other marketplaces, it’s like, to me it’s just a no-brainer. Would you agree with that? I mean, people might say you’re biased here, but why do you, is it just laziness that some people don’t want want to get a, a barcode or that’s being cheap, or what? Michelle: It could be. So there are a couple of reasons why a GTIN exemption or seller seeks GTIN exemptions. One is if you do have a generic product or you label your product generic, right now, currently Amazon does not allow you to have a generic product with a GTIN. However, that’s changing soon. So we do know that they’re, you know, cuz in the standards you can actually have a GTIN associated to a generic product. So they’re working to change that. So we’re really excited that they’re understanding the use of our standards. So that’s one category that we’ve seen the GTIN exemptions, generics other ones could be laziness. Yeah, it could be. We’ve also seen it in high SKU intensity, like in the apparel sector where they have, you know, runs of a hundred thousand different types of t-shirts that could be all customized, that’s a lot of GTINs to assign and maybe not every one of them will be purchased. And so, you know, why, why spend that money on it? So that we’ve seen that case too trying to come up with some solutions for those categories. But ideally, of course I’m biased. I would always say assign a GTIN to your product. Bradley Sutton: Sure. Yeah. Alright. I mean, I’m not biased and that’s what I would say <laugh>. Michelle: Yeah. Bradley Sutton: I actually, you know, there, there are some questions from some of our users, you know, when they found out that I was going to, you know, go ahead and have you back on the show. And, and, and Jay you know, who’s actually been on this podcast before, he was wondering about what’s the latest as far as like catalog corrections made when, like, let’s say the ASIN is showing the incorrect brand, but the UPC is assigned to your brand or no, aligned to your brand. So I’m not sure if I understand that question, but looks like maybe there’s a product that has the wrong brand but has the right UPC, you know, like is does, is GS1 gonna provide any help? Like, does, can Amazon see that, you know, if if it was a GS1 barcode, can Amazon see that it’s assigned to a certain brand in GS1? And then maybe that will help you know, make the transition. Michelle: So I think what you’re explaining is what we call a GTIN hijacking scenario. Where you go to list your own product, you own it or, and you have the GTIN associated and then it’s already on the platform. Bradley Sutton: If that’s what he meant, then yeah, that I exactly know what that is. It’s happened to me before. Okay. So, so how do you, what’s your suggestion on? Michelle: So the best way that, you know, we’ve been working with Amazon selling partner support to try to help sellers through that because it can get very tricky. So if you are the, the rightful owner of your GS1 GTIN what we recommend is, first of all, when hopefully you know, or the reason why it might be out there is it was on the platform a lot longer before Amazon started doing some of the checks against the GS1 database. So we’ve seen that. Because right now, anytime a new GTINs listed, it does check against our database to ensure that that company is associated to that GTIN. So Bradley Sutton: What does it mean by like associated? Like what if I have multiple brands, it let’s say I have two, or let’s say I have three companies, you know, obviously with, with you know, GS1, you know, I’m one company, but let’s say on Amazon, you know, I might have three or four accounts, you know, each of them have four different accounts or four different brands or something. If they’re all in the same GS1 account, does that count as, you know, being, I forgot what the word you used related or whatever, or do I need separate GS1 accounts as well? Michelle: You don’t need separate GS1 accounts. Now the, this is where it does get tricky cuz you think about like some of the large multinationals, like Coca-Cola, everybody knows Coca-Cola, right? The company is Coca-Cola Company, however, they have multiple brands. They have Diet Coke, Coke, Coke Zero. So they’ll have a whole list of brands. Now, unfortunately we don’t store at GS1, we don’t store all the brands associated to that company. So I think what you’re saying is how does Amazon know that I have Diet Coke, Coke, Coke Zero, all that. That is upon the brand to submit that to Amazon. So they have a like a brand authorization form that they’ll ask new sellers to provide so that they have listed out all the brands that they are authorized to sell. We’re working with Amazon to try to figure out how to help provide that data. But Amazon is looking for that brand level information from directly from the sellers. Right now, unfortunately we don’t, at GS1 don’t collect all that brand information too. So we collect the company name Coca-Cola Company and then your license, but we don’t collect all that brand information and share that with Amazon. Bradley Sutton: Yeah, because I was, I’m just thinking, you know, like in my personal experience, I have like a GS1 UK account and I use it for our, you know, helium 10 products, which is called Project X’s Reality TV show that we did on YouTube a couple years ago. But then I also use that same account for the GS1 account to, to make barcodes for some of my other, you know, personal Amazon accounts and, and other people’s Amazon accounts that I, or not other people’s, but you know, other accounts I have full control over. Now I haven’t had any issues, you know, on the Amazon side, so is it maybe because Amazon has already tied, you know, these different accounts to that same, you know, GS1 will say, okay, it’s using the same, you know, prefix and and it’s obviously coming from the same account. Is that why I’m not having issues or It Michelle: Could be, it could be. And it could be that your brand, so you are using only your, your brand. There’s cases where third party sellers can be selling same brand. So two or two or three people can be selling the same brand. And so how does Amazon know which seller is authorized to sell that brand? Cuz some may or may not be able to. So in those cases, especially the third party sellers, if they’re not a first party seller, then they might have to submit this brand authorization form, if that makes sense. Bradley Sutton: Okay. All right. All right. Sounds good. Another question from Jay, and this is just, you know, I was gonna ask this myself too, but still pretty much the same, where like, Hey, Amazon does not want anybody buying barcodes not from GS1, like from, you know, resellers that that’s still gonna be a, a chance to get you in trouble, right? Michelle: Yeah, again, they do check that license information against the GS1 database and they, they are pretty firm with that. You know, I’ve, I’ve heard other cases where I’ve had it before again, before they started making these checks against the GS1 database some of these GTIN s were allowed on the platform, or maybe they weren’t true GS1 GTINs, but they are definitely staying firm with it must come from GS1. Bradley Sutton: Yeah. You know, a few people are just curious, like why different GS1 offices have have su…
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