My wife has started a business with a partner and is preparing to start selling a new line of ‘schooling breeches’ (tights worn by woman who ride horses). I offered to assist with some of the back-end systems figuring we’d be up and running on Amazon in a couple of hours. In fact, the wireframe of the site is up and running Powered by Amazon WebStore; it only took a couple of hours to setup. While not cheap (39.99$ per month PLUS the commissions) it is an amazing offering – website design wizard, category management, inventory, check-out processing via Amazon, reporting, the list of features goes on.
One big surprise however was the requirement for a UPC/EAN on items that a company wishes to list on Amazon. As of August 2008 Amazon now requires such codes. This requirement will certainly shut out a lot of eBay sellers from using Amazon as a channel. The cost of sales is simply too high for the enthusiast sellers of collectibles and spare-time entrepreneurs.
Note to Amazon – announce this fact prior to sign-up.
Note to online sellers – it’s call a Pro Merchant account for a reason.
It has been interesting to learn about the UPC aftermarket. Apparently, UPCs used to be sold rather than leased as they are today. Something smells fishy…(pun intended)
Tags: EAN, Pro Merchant, UPC
I totally agree with you and shame on Amazon. I have over 4000 products and was shocked to see Amazon take that route. The average cost of a single UPC code is about $30. Take art.com and allposters.com as an example, do you think Amazon required them to UPC over 200,000 posters that sell for 7 bucks??? No way – that would cost over 6 million dollars!!! Amazon is making some exceptions to certain businesses. I call for a class action lawsuit…
I agree that this is a bit of a pain. However, it does make sense for them to follow the standard retail numbering system instead of overlaying their own numbering.
One way to get UPC codes, aside from leasing 100 or more from the main GS1 organzation for big money, is to go to Simply Barcodes. They are reputable and offer single UPC codes, including the digital barcode, for $89 without any annual fees.
It’s still a bit of money but with that you’re ready and set up to move your products through normal retailers and distributors as sales pick up.
Yes, Amazon does not disclose of the UPC requirements before hand… Jordan, you are right on! Amazon allows certain merchants to go without UPC codes. I know there is a UPC exemption procedure and I did follow it only to be rejected when other merchants clearly got the exemption for the same products! I see that Amazon does discriminate perhaps depending on sales volume, relationship with certain merchants, and whether you are in bed with someone on the inside! They are going to lose a lot of business to eBay and I am glad they were exposed…
There is a good breakdown of available companies at
http://www.singleupc.com/resellermatrix.htm
Nice overview
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