It frustrates me when I hear of a newsagency supplier using the same barcode on multiple products. Retailers cannot adequately track sales in such a situation. Suppliers who do this deny newsagents the opportunity to understand what is happening in their business.
How do you understand the performance of your card department with, say, 800 different designs, where a barcode is shared with fifty to one hundreds designs? You can’t! Only the card company can analyse performance in such a situation.
This is poor service of the retail newsagents by the supplier, the card company in my example above. It is disrespectful and not best practice.
While newsagents can produce their own barcodes for cards, they should not have to as doing so would be an extra cost and take extra labour.
We need to be more demanding of our suppliers on these matters.
The more suppliers help me more easily understand the performance of inventory in my business the better for me and for them, and the better for my customers.
We are not cottage industry retailers. We are a strong national channel competing with many national retailers. One way we can effectively compete is with data and business tools of a standard equal to our competitors.
A great point Mark – hence why Tatts has introduced the scanning of their instant tickets. I am a small newsagent who can’t afford an advanced point of sale system so I see this as a positive step forward in stock management in my opinion. At a cost much less than some of the point of sale systems out there.