Are they usually unique countrywide? Worldwide?
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I’ll leave this here for a start
If it’s anything like other, non-food distribution, then they’ll have their own in-house barcode system that cross-references whatever barcode system was used by the shipper and/or manufacturers (or packers or w/e). It’s kind of silly IMO that there’s no uniform inventory control system for everything one could possibly buy, sell, exchange, or transfer.
But companies have spent decades putting these systems together piecemeal, often using stupidly expensive proprietary software that doesn’t know how to talk to any other software. So they’re sure as hell not going to back out on the sunk cost fallacy now and invest in a whole new significantly more efficient system that will save them more money down the road. After all, corporate executives don’t plan on sticking around in any one position long enough to bother with long-term planning.
Just little off topic, but I had to look in to it few months ago and there are bunch of shitty resellers that sell individual codes.
It looks like good deal but when you need to put it on more than 10 unique products then it is better to register as manufacturer. The basic tear is ~40€/year and you can create 5000 codes.
And yes at least in EU they are managed by one company that then allocate them to countrys.
Edit: I refer to EAN specifically, shops usually requires them.
AFAIK they have country code and product code in them.
