There are a lot of companies on the internet that sell barcodes. Many of them give you truthful information and there are a handful that are quite deceiving using such terminology as Official Site or Official Source, etc.

Be aware of what you are getting yourself into when you decide to make your purchase. If a company mentions that they have to pay renewal fees, they are in breach of their agreement with the GS1 (formerly known as the Uniform Code Council). Only companies that hold a valid prefix that predates August of 2002 can subdivide their pool of barcodes and sell them.

Sometimes Buying a Cheap UPC Barcode isn’t so cheap. There are companies that have convoluted terms and conditions hidden on various pages eluding to the fact that once they sell you Cheap UPC barcodes they will then charge you a monthly subscription fee. There are companies will accept barcodes back which means that there can be multiple vendors using the same barcode.

There are only two ways to get a barcode. You enter into an agreement with the GS1 which can be a sizeable amount of money or you go Nationwide Barcode or a similar company.

Barcodes are a very important aspect to getting your product to market. It can be very expensive to learn after the fact that your provider didn’t have legal right to sell you barcodes or your barcodes have been assigned to another company.

Nationwide Barcode: www.nationwidebarcode.com

If you are an Amazon reseller, you are aware that Amazon recently began their requirements of UPC (Universal Product Code) barcode numbers on every product. From the Amazon sellers that I have talked to, this is a mixed blessing.

Having to purchase an EAN barcode or  UPC barcode adds to the cost of doing business, however, it really speeds things up from a database and inventory management perspective.

Amazon continues to grow at an amazing rate and a 12 digit UPC code (or 13 digit EAN) associated with every product streamlines their operations and gets YOUR product to YOUR customers a lot faster. Since EAN and UPC-A barcodes are the de facto standard for sales and inventory tracking, they have chosen to embrace this standard and not reinvent the wheel with different barcode symbologies or tracking methods.

Amazon does take a look at some categories for UPC exemptions but these are rapidly shrinking categories and seem to be limited to non-consumer products — business-to-business products not sold in a retail store and Custom made-to-order products. They have just recently eliminated their UPC exemptions for Apparel & Accessories as of June 5, 2009.

Nationwide Barcode has a program for Amazon Resellers providing blocks of EAN or UPC barcode numbers ranging from blocks of 100 to a block of 1000 barcodes in increments of 100 units. Barcode graphics are not supplied, however, customers get an excel spreadsheet with12 digit UPC-A bar code numbers to help manage their products along with a certificate of authenticity.

You can either purchase your barcodes for Amazon by clicking here  - www.nationwidebarcode.com/

The short answer is “no”

The longer answer follows:

Revelation 13: (17) so that they could not buy or sell unless they had the mark, which is the name of the beast or the number of its name. (18) This calls for wisdom. Let the person who has insight calculate the number of the beast, for it is the number of a man. That number is 666.

Barcodes are all database driven. The barcode only represents a series of numbers containing a prefix, item numbers and a check digit.

The numbers corresponding to the barcode are scanned or entered into a database exactly as indicated below the barcode (the human readable numbers). Along with the barcode number, the information relating to the product including ‘regular’ and ‘sale’ price is also entered. When an item is scanned, the information is pulled from the database and the customer is charged the proper amount of money, at the same time, inventory is adjusted downward.

There are the three sets of guard bars, two bars on the far left, the far right and in the middle. Since these guard bars appear three times in a barcode, and look similar to the number 6, some people have claimed that the pattern 6-6-6 was embedded in every barcode.

According to Mr. Laurer, the inventor of the UPC/EAN barcode, “There is nothing sinister about this nor does it have anything to do with the Bible’s mark of the beast. Each character is a fixed length, 7 modules and composed of two spaces and two bars. From the outer ends toward the center, the character starts with a space and therefore a single bar is required to ‘close’ the character. The other bar is used to allow the level setting (gain) circuitry to adjust to the contrast of the particular symbol. The center pattern is narrow space, narrow bar, narrow space, narrow bar. This pattern is 4 modules wide and distinguishes it from the a 7 module character thus giving direction and end information to the logic. The assignment of digits to specific patterns was arbitrary.’

Barcodes are one of the things that helped bridge the gap between physical products and automated inventory tracking.

Sources: http://www.laurerupc.com/  and common sense.

Although UPC barcodes have been around for several years, more and more people are subject to the dilemma of what to do in order to get their product in stores, especially those stores that require a UPC barcode. UPC barcodes are dispensed by the GS1 US, a not-for-profit organization.

Businesses need a different UPC barcode for each variation of a product including different colors or sizes. If you go  to the GS1 US, you pay them for the prefix which allows you to create 100, 1000, 10,000 or 100,000 UPC barcodes. This is not cheap. For membership in the GS1 US, you must pay an initial fee of $750 and an annual renewal fee of $150.00 per year. This gives you the ability to generate 100 UPC barcodes. If you need more than this, the fee goes up…way up.

A cost saving option is to use a 3rd party providers like Nationwide Barcode: http://www.nationwidebarcode.com. Nationwide Barcode sells single barcodes for $14.95 and is a perfect solution if you are working with Amazon, Home Depot, Whole Foods, Menards or local and independent retailers.

These companies subdivide their prefixes and sell 12-digit UPC barcodes.

If you are working with the some of the major retailers in the US like Walmart and Krogers, you will need to get your own prefix from the GS1. Walmart and Krogers tie the prefix to their Electronic Data Interchange, which is the way that they pay their vendors so having a unique number is critical. If you are not working with

Here is some comparative information about UPC barcode resellers:

NATIONWIDE BARCODE
Nationwide Barcode looks to be the largest of the resellers. In 2-1/2 years, they have sold nearly 400,000 UPC (and EAN) barcodes.
Their core business was content development (audio, video, books, eBooks, software, etc.) and media manufacturing (diskettes, CD, DVD, USB, etc.). They had a series of prefixes from these previous business that all predated 2002 when the GS1 changed their terms and conditions. All of our prefixes are grandfathered with no constraints and no renewal fees. They have been validated by George Laurer, inventor of the UPC Barcode (www.laurerupc.com)
They provide three graphic formats – eps, jpg and tif.
They guarantee that all barcodes are unique and we provide a transfer of ownership/certificate of authenticity.
$14.95 for one barcode and $195 for 100. We have lower prices for high volumes. They provide all barcodes same day (M-F).
They have a toll free number answered by a handful of customer service reps. Corporate office is outside of Seattle field office is in Reno Nevada and their customer service is in Salt Lake City.
They guarantee that barcodes are 100% unique.

The following information provided has been pulled off other sites and is meant as a way to compare prices, services and business practices.

GS1
This is where all barcodes originate.  Nationwide Barcode has an article on their site that goes into detail about the GS1: http://www.nationwidebarcode.com/purchase-barcodes/gs1-or-nationwide-barcode/

BUYABARCODE.COM
Single Barcodes are $85.00/reorders are $35.00 – They do have quantity prices — as low as $7.95

They mention that they are the only Barcode source featured in the Wall Street Journal. Being the first on the scene doesn’t make anyone the best source of supply. This is a legacy article published on-line on September 4, 2007 prior to the inception of many other barcode companies (including Nationwide Barcode).  BuyABarcode claims an endorsement by TheBarcodeRegistry.com – This is their company with no known affiliations to any retailers or UPC database organizations.

Buy a Barcode only provides jpg graphics. This is not a good format for professional designers who prefer .eps scalable images (vector)

SINGLE UPC .COM
Their Google ad state that they are the #1 Trusted Source for UPC Numbers with Prices at $.40
When you click on their linked ad(http://www.singleupc.com/upcresellers.htm ) their site states “Beware of Deals which seem too good to be true” – the $0.40 barcodes cannot be found anywhere on their site. According to their site, prices range from $23.00 to $14.00 each. They have a lot of good information on their site about barcodes and how they work, however, their pricing and their advertising does not live up to their claim of being the #1 Trusted Source.

UPCCODE.NET – Simply Barcodes
Their value proposition is that they are the most visited and preferred site to safely buy official, legal UPC codes.
They charge $89.00 per barcode which places them in the category of being  the most expensive barcode provider. There is no correlation between being the most expensive and providing a barcode that is any different than the other providers.

EZUPC.com
The range of prices are $19.99 for 1 to $4.49 for 200+. They provide eps, jpg and tif files. This seems to be a great company with the exception of a money back guarantee. Accepting barcodes back could create a potential risk that the barcode  could have been used by another client when returned to inventory.

QUALITYUPC.com Quality UPC
Prices range from $29.99 for 1 to $8.99 for 200+. They provide eps, pdf and tif files (no jpg).

IWANTMYBARCODE.COM  (Owned by HL Outdoors of the Everlasting Slip Bobber)
This business is owned by Steve Leroy Johnson who obtained a prefix for his fishing products and had extra barcodes remaining. He set up this business to sell off those barcodes. He sells barcodes for $22.00 for one with tiered volume pricing as low as $5.00 each for 1oo.

UPCBARCODES.BIZ
One Barcode for 29.00 – 100+ for 12.00. Their site copyright is 2008  and has not been updated since then.

BARCODES USA (MOZIAN & ASSOCIATES)
They provide either a TIF or a JPG image file (no eps vector files). Prices range from 19.95 to 9.95 in volume.   Their site has not been updated since 2009

Nationwide Barcode is the preferred vendor for Pandora (Amazon sales of physical and digital music) and Indie Artists Alliance www.indieartistsalliance.com  – Indie Artists Alliance is a resource center and knowledge bank for Independent Musicians.

Nationwide Barcode is located at www.nationwidebarcode.com