Hi,
I am looking for a little advice. We have started selling on Amazon and it is going well, I would recommend people who sell many new items to give it a try.

To list on Amazon you must have an EAN number, this is the number below the bar code on the product. About 65% of our products come with an EAN either from our supplier or the manufacturers own EAN, so we can list new items directly into the Amazon catalogue. We can create our own EAN numbers, this is done by registration and subscription with GS1 UK, my question is this can there be two or more EAN numbers for the same item. For instance a product maybe supplied by our supplier without an EAN number but that does not mean there isn't one, and as a retailer we could create one only to find latter on there was one, or many retailers could create new ones all for the same product.
I hope I have made sense,
Sean

__________________
Selling electronic and electrical accessories such as cables, connectors and goods for computers video and audio equipment. Free UK Shipping.

If you can't find the EAN for a product then you can create one yourself. Some smaller manufacturers don't use them so it's sometimes necessary for someone further down the supply chain to create one for that product. Obviously the higher up the supply chain it's created the easier and less confusing it is for everyone else.

I'm not sure if you would be able to print another manufacturer's EAN on your stock if you were to discover the number after taking delivery as I don't know if the software is locked to a particular manufacturer's code or not. I would imagine it is to prevent you passing your stuff off as someone else's. I haven't created them personally so I don't know how restrictive the system is for printing them but I imagine you would know the answer to that yourself.

In short, if it doesn't appear to have an EAN then you can create a unique one for it. but I don't know of it's possible to recreate the original manufacturer's one if you discover it later, I would imagine not.

__________________
Lawrence

Hi,
I know of several retailers who create there own EAN's and sell there items under there number even though there is an original manufactures EAN number for the product in question. This then means you can not list your identical item along side there's even if it comes from the same manufacture, because the retailer now owns the new EAN and therefore the product is now classed as different. Funny old world.

__________________
Selling electronic and electrical accessories such as cables, connectors and goods for computers video and audio equipment. Free UK Shipping.

That's a bit naughty of them. I doubt they are doing unintentionally either. You'd think that the likes of Amazon would do something about this as the other retailer is creating a monopoly for themselves for that product.

Don't Amazon have a system in place for reporting of such tactics?

__________________
Lawrence