Barcodes for Cards
Are you selling greetings cards? We can advise you on barcodes for cards and save you money.
You have 3 choices when it comes to getting barcodes for postcards or greeting cards:
(1) Each card could be assigned a different 13-digit EAN-13 retail bar code 
This is the best way to go. Retailers prefer this because for two reasons. Firstly your barcodes will definitely be compatible with whatever barcoding system they have. Secondly it means that the retailer can do an automatic stock-take which is much faster and accurate. Please scroll down to order an EAN-13 Barcode Package.
(2) All of the cards could use the same EAN-13 barcode number, with an extra 2-digit add-on barcode at the end (ranging from 01 up to 99, to represent the different cards)
The disadvantage of this option is that only some retail inventory systems recognise the 2-digit add-on barcodes (others will simply read the first 13 digits, and ignore the 2-digit add ons). If your retailer’s system copes with add-on barcodes, then this option will work well and allows your retailer to do automatic stock-takes. If your retailer’s system doesn’t cope with add-on barcodes then all the barcodes will be treated as if they have the same (13 digit) barcode number hence the inventory system won’t be able to differentiate between them. This means that your retailer would need to do manual stock-takes and reordering.
(3) All of the cards could use the same EAN-13 barcode
This means that the retailer’s inventory system will treat all cards exactly the same, so the retailer will need to keep a close eye on which cards are selling out the fastest and which ones they need to reorder (their system can’t automatically do this for them). Please note that you need a different EAN-13 barcode number for each different price category. If you have two different price groups (e.g. your standard birthday cards sell for 7 HKD each, but your larger cards sell for 10 HKD each) then you would need 2 different EAN-13 barcodes. Please scroll down to order EAN-13 Barcode Packages.
We have lots of experience providing barcodes for use on greeting cards and postcards. Please send us an email if you’d like any advice, or a quote – [email protected].