If you are starting to think about barcodes for your greeting cards, you have noticed some greeting cards from major companies with two barcodes on the back of the greeting card.

These are added only by the major card manufacturers because they manage their own inventory in stores. The first barcode (the standard UPC-A barcode) is used to track inventor and price in the stores, the second one is used by the Greeting Card Company to self-manage their inventory tracking. Most major Greeting Card companies hire people to go into stores like CVS, Walgreens, Target, etc. and with hand-held computers with built-in scanners, manage the inventory and then report back to the stores with their findings.

If you are a small to mid-sized publisher and distributor of greeting cards, the regular 12 digit UPC Barcode is all you need.

Now…

There are two ways that you can manage this. You can have one barcode on each unique card allowing for very detailed inventory management -OR- you could categorize your cards in batches. All Mother’s Day cards that sell for $4.99 have the same barcode, all Get Well cards that sell for $3.99 have the same barcode, etc.

The first way gives you better inventory management and opens the doors to additional sales, the second way is less expensive for you (which could result in fewer reorders to you)