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Category: Compliance

Reaching Out Across Offline & Online Sales Channels Through GS1 Barcode Numbers

Posted on by Nitesh Agrawal

Selling is no longer confined to physical retail outlets. With proliferation of online shopping portals, consumers today look up, evaluate and purchase products through a mix of offline and online selling channels. This enables them make better informed purchase decisions on variety, price and location at just a click of a button.

While five years ago, fbb (Future Retail’s fashion brand), sold its popular own brand merchandise  through its retail outlets only, it now sells them through its own shopping portal and that of several other leading shopping portals like Amazon, Flipkart, Myntra, Paytm, etc. This has very significantly enhanced market reach and accessibility to its wide range of apparel products.

To enable the above, fbb switched from using its proprietary barcode numbers to GS1 barcode numbers (EAN codes), which was a key requirement for listing products on multiple online shopping portals.  This also allows fbb to provide a lot more consumer related information about its products than what was possible earlier through offline sales channels, since its SKU data gets populated into GS1 India’s DataKart, the online national repository of information on retailed products and their attributes, linked through the GS1 barcode number.

DataKart also enables it generate and allocate unique barcode numbers to thousands of its products, without ambiguity and with the assurance that its products would get recognised and accepted since GS1 standards are the de facto product identification standards in retail worldwide.

“Internally, we no longer have to maintain and manage two separate supply chains for offline & online and we now have real time visibility to inventories and stock movements, whether selling through our retail stores or catering to requirements of multiple shopping portals.  This eliminates unnecessary effort and costs in managing our supply chain and logistics operations, while enhancing our ability to seamlessly meet requirements of today’s omni channels and ensure our product availability at all times to shoppers”, said Me. Alok Dharadhar,  Chief – Retail & Head, Business Processes at fbb

Through GS1 India’s ‘Smart Consumer’ mobile app which has been downloaded by thousands of consumers across the country, fbb now has the ability to reach out directly to consumers and market its own brand products, a lot more effectively through a scan of the GS1 barcode on our products.

The switch to GS1 barcode numbers has also helped it streamline and maintain a single coding structure for our entire range of products, which greatly simplifies its product item master management, ordering and supplies receipt operations.

All You Need to Know About Getting GS1 Barcode Numbers for your Products

Posted on by Nitesh Agrawal

Barcode numbers play a crucial role in supply chains, including selling products over the counter and listing them on e-commerce websites. They help retailers and e-tailers in uniquely identifying each product and differentiating them from each other.

Over 2 million brand owners use GS1 barcodes across the globe, making it a de facto standard for the retail industry worldwide.

It is important to note that GS1 India is the only authorised body in India to issue GS1 barcode numbers. However, before making a purchase decision, let’s find out some of the benefits of GS1 barcode numbers

How do Barcodes Work?

Comply with various national and international regulations

Various national and international regulatory bodies have endorsed the use of GS1 barcodes on products. Use of GS1 barcode numbers help you in complying with various requirements, including that of Ministry of Consumer Affairs, DGFT, US FDA, Ministry of Health & Family Welfare, Delhi Excise EU Regulations on UDI, and more. Read more.

Listing products with online and offline retailers

GS1 barcode numbers on your products enable you to list your products faster with leading retailers and online shopping portals.

Higher search ranking of your products

GS1 barcode numbers, when used on a product webpage, shows 40% improvement in search results.

Easy barcode management

GS1’s DataKart service enables free and easy barcode number management and generation of barcode images. Read more about the benefits of DataKart.

GS1 India is the only authorized body to issue GS1 barcodes in India

Read about the business impact of buying barcodes from unauthorized sources.

An affiliate of GS1 Global, GS1 India is a standards organisation by the Ministry of Commerce and Industry, Government of India and Bureau of Indian Standards. GS1 barcode is a 13-digit numeric code with prefix ‘890’ that is registered trademark under GS1 India.

What to do in case you come across unauthorised selling of GS1 barcode numbers?

In case you notice any agency or organisation claiming to provide GS1 barcodes at lower costs, you may report the activity to GS1 India. Give us a call on 011-42890830 or visit https://www.gs1india.org/content/contact-us/. You can also contact GS1 India in case of any query related to purchasing or using GS1 barcode numbers on your products.

Compliance with National and International Regulations Made Easy with GS1 Barcodes

Posted on by Nitesh Agrawal

Barcode numbers or unique product codes give an identity to your products, whether you are selling them online or through retain channels. But the benefits of having barcodes are not just confined to having an identity or ease of selling. The benefits are multipronged. One such important benefit of identifying your products with GS1 barcodes is compliance with several government regulations.

Compliance with national and international regulations

Various national and international regulations currently require/endorse the need for GS1 barcode numbers on products. Some of these include:

  • DGFT Public Notice No. 52 2015/2020 mandates use of GS1 barcodes on exported medicines to facilitate track & trace and authentication
  • Delhi Excise department uses barcodes on liquor for authentication
  • Ministry of Health & Family Welfare’s Medical Devices Rules 2017, states global trade item number (GTIN) for medical devices
  • U.S. FDA Regulation for Unique Device Identifier (UDI) for medical devices
  • EU Regulations on medical devices and on in-vitro diagnostics
  • Other regulations, including the Russian Federation law which will be in full force as of January 1, 2020; the EU Falsified Medicines Directive (FMD) which went into full force on February 9, 2018; the Drug Supply Chain Security Act (DSCSA) where serialization mandate went into effect on November 27, 2018

Connect with consumers using Smart Consumer app

With GS1 barcode numbers on your products, you can upload your product information on GS1’s DataKart service, which feeds data to the Smart Consumer mobile app. Consumers can access this product data while scanning the product barcode using the Smart Consumer mobile app. This helps them to get the complete product information of the product, which may not be readable/available on the packaging of products including cosmetics, personal care, etc. This helps a consumer to make better purchasing decision and consume with awareness.

Further, as a part of Digital India and consumer empowerment initiatives, regulatory bodies such as FSSAI and AGMARK have directed brand owners to publish their product data on Smart Consumer app, to make it accessible to consumers.

Please note that GS1 India is the only authorised body to sell and issue GS1 barcode numbers (numbers starting with 890) in the country. Buying your barcode numbers from an authentic source – GS1 India – benefits your business in multiple ways, including compliance with regulatory requirements, improved search results, automated data capture and more.

Business Impact of Buying Barcodes from Unauthorized Sources

Posted on by Nitesh Agrawal

Overview

If you are a business owner selling products through retail chains and/or online shopping websites, it comes without saying that your products need to be identified with barcode numbers/unique product codes. These barcode numbers not only enable you to sell products through modern retail channels (online and in-store), but also come with a plethora of other benefits for your business.

It is important to note that GS1 India is the only authorised body to sell and issue GS1 barcode numbers (numbers starting with ‘890’) in the country. Buying your barcode numbers from an authentic source – GS1 India – benefits your business in multiple ways including compliance with regulatory requirements, improved search results, automated data capture and more.

Despite these facts, there are a lot of companies that, due to pricing options, choose to invest in barcodes that are not directly issued by GS1 India. While the offer seems lucrative at first, the consequences of buying barcodes from unauthorised sources can impact your business adversely in the long run. Below are some of such impacts:

Multiple vendors, increased costs

One of the benefits of buying barcodes from GS1 India is the free access to DataKart service for managing product and barcode information. When you buy barcode numbers from an unauthorized source, you need to find and pay packaging and other vendors for encoding barcode numbers into barcode images, which eventually increases your overall cost.

Major retail channels only accept GS1 barcode numbers

Most of the big retail channels in India, both offline and online, only accept products with GS1 barcode numbers to list in their systems (item masters) and avoid scanning issues at the checkout counters. In such cases, barcodes bought from unauthorised sources becomes unusable, therefore, compelling the brand owner to scrap their entire product packaging along with the old barcodes and replace it with new barcode numbers (procured from GS1 India) and new packaging carrying the same.

Hence, to safeguard your business from such nuances, it is advisable to buy GS1 barcode numbers from GS1 India only.

Smart Consumer App is The New System for Redressal of Consumer Complaints: FSSAI & MoCA

Posted on by Nitesh Agrawal

FSSAI and Ministry of Consumer Affairs informed the Industry about the new system for redressal of consumer complaints through integration with the ‘Smart Consumer’ mobile app of Department of Consumer Affairs, during the National Conference on ‘Enabling Regulatory Compliance & Connecting with Consumers’.

The conference was jointly organised by Ministry of Consumer Affairs, FSSAI, and GS1 India recently and attended by over 100 companies, including leading brand owners, retailers, and online shopping portals. Some of the participants include Reliance Retail, Big Bazaar, Amazon, Canteen Stores Department, Coca Cola, Paytm, Kellogg’s, Flipkart, Grofers, Walmart, Nestle, Dabur, Patanjali, J&J, HUL, Britannia, Mondelez, Kraft Heinz, ITC, Tata Global Beverages, Mother Dairy, amongst many others.

Shri Pawan Agarwal, CEO, FSSAI, stated that with this integration, no consumer complaint would go unresolved and consumers would gain visibility to FSSAI license number certificates and product recall alerts.

Shri P V Rama Sastry, JS, Department of Consumer Affairs explained how scanning of barcodes (which use GTIN – Global Trade Identification Numbers) on consumer products using the Smart Consumer app would enable consumers to read marking and labelling information with ease, which is otherwise difficult due to small print on product labels.

Leading retailers and brand owners, including Nestle India, Reliance Retail, Canteen Stores Department, Big Bazaar and others shared their experiences of exchanging product data with trading partners using DataKart – a national repository of retailed product data that feeds in information to smart consumer mobile app. They also talked about how DataKart helps them in mitigating challenges in access to quality, up-to-date data on retailed products, including on new product introductions, product withdrawals, active/inactive SKUs, product changes, etc.

Finally, GS1 India provided a detailed roadmap on how Indian Retail Industry could comply with Regulatory requirements and exchange product information amongst stakeholders through DataKart.

Further, the regulators also informed Industry on various Legal Metrology requirements, product recall, and e-commerce guidelines for food business operators.

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