There is no denying the power of the Internet in its ability to make sales. The recent explosion of online based startups provides a fantastic case study for the power of the Internet to make entrepreneurs, and in some case, millionaires. However, for all its glamour, the majority of sales still happen in classic brick and mortar storefronts. In fact, e-commerce sales in the US for the first quarter of 2015 accounted for a scant 7% of total sales according to the US Census Bureau Department of Commerce. The cold hard reality is, as far as ecommerce has come, getting the best exposure and sales for your product still means getting it on a shelf at some point.

This post will aim to provide advice in that regard. After all, there may be thousands of competitors in your space, and without proper optimization consumers will never see your product. However, on a store shelf, every person who walks by will know what you offer. Here are a few tips for getting your product onto store shelves:

Start With Small Retailers and Local Distribution

While big names like Wal-Mart might be attractive, remember that everybody will be targeting them, and only a very small percentage of them will ever get close to having their product distributed on store shelves. However, there are thousands of smaller chains and outlets where you can put your product up, and doing well in these smaller shops can add up to just as many sales as getting into one major chain.

Just focus on one store at a time, and pitch to local chains that do well but likely don’t have the same barriers to entry that others would have.
If you cannot seem to get your foot in the door even after reading this guide entirely with even local retailers, you can never go wrong with e-commerce. While it does not represent as many sales as you might want, it will still provide hard numbers and data you can present to retailers and prove that your product sells.

Build Relationships with Managers

Networking is one of the most valuable skills you can learn in business. By building up a relationship with local store managers, you can get your foot in the door. You still need a product that will be worth the time, money, and floor space, but getting that relationship established will go a long way. Get friendly, start talking business, show that you know what you are doing and respect their ability to do what they do. Once this relationship is established, don’t be surprised to get a call asking you to show them what you have to offer.

Focus on the Data

Once you get the opportunity to make your pitch, focus on your data. Most retailers do not care about your story (and if you networked, they probably know it), they want to know: will it sell? Will it turn a profit? Is it worth my time to include in my inventory? When making your pitch, get directly to the point and give them the hard figures. The hard data that will help make your case include:

• Consumer demand for your product or a product like it
• How much you can make and how quickly you can make it
• Price points
• Profit margins on a per unit basis

Making your pitch will ultimately require you to know your product inside and out, and how it will turn a profit for the retailer. If you have gotten your product into other stores, showing how well it performed will go a long way towards solidifying your place on the shelf.

UPC Product Codes

UPC codes are a necessity for any product you sell. This system facilitates inventory tracking for the retailer and is a requirement for having your product sold with any retailer. It is what allows barcode scanners to function and without this system, commerce would not be nearly as efficient as it is today. As such, make sure you have your UPC product codes lined up and affiliated with your product. Remember you will need a unique code for every color and version of your product that you put out on the market, but not every iteration of the same product. Keep this distinction in mind: to use the same UPC code on an item, it has to be the same in every way, not merely “fundamentally similar.”

About 1% of retailers will also require GS1 certification before they will accept your products, so do your homework before you buy.

We hope this guide will help guide you towards success in your endeavors. Following these tips you are sure to get your product on store shelves, and from there watch the profits roll in!

Most retailers – from grocery stores to big-box superstores – depend on UPC barcodes to track items in their stores, reduce human error and speed the transaction process with customers. “UPC” stands for Universal Product Code and is a 1D (linear) code with the typical ‘picket fence’ style most people are familiar with. This type of barcode is commonly used in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia and other countries. The most common form, the UPC-A, consists of 12 numerical digits, which are uniquely assigned to each trade item.

History of the UPC

The beginnings of the UPC barcode kicked off in 1932 when Harvard business student Wallace Flint wrote about a punched card system in his master’s thesis, where each card represented a product in the store. Unfortunately, it did not catch on.

Later in 1970, a group of grocery industry trade associations formed the Uniform Grocery Product Code Council to define the numerical format of the Uniform Product Code. Technology firms, including names you might recognize like IBM and RCA, proposed alternative symbol representations to the council, many of whom had been working on the barcode technology for decades. In the end, the council chose a slightly modified version of the IBM proposal, developed by IBM’s George Laurer, giving it the name we use today. Laurer is now considered the inventor of the UPC.

Pop quiz: The first UPC-marked item ever scanned at a retail checkout was a 10-pack of Wrigley’s Juicy Fruit in 1974 at a supermarket in Troy, Ohio. The pack of gum is now on display at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C.

Creative Uses for the Barcode           

Today, FedEx is one of the world’s largest users of the barcode. Yet over the years, there have been many creative uses for the barcode, including the following:

• Tracking Bees. Dr. Stephen Buchmann of the Carl Hayden Bee Research Center in Tucson, Arizona, wanted to find a way to track bees when they left the hive. He needed to know how far bees fly to find pollen, how long they’re gone and how often they leave and return to the hive. So, he created the world’s smallest barcode on a paper label 1/20th the weight of the pollen a bee carries, shaped to fit a bee’s thorax. A laser scanner mounted over the tunnel-shaped entrance to the hive then recorded their activities. (Source: The New York Times).
• Tracking Boats. The US army uses 2ft-long barcodes to label 50ft boats which are in storage at its West Point military academy in New York. These huge barcodes store information about the boats’ previous travels. (Source: The Free Library).
• Tracking Patient Identification. In the healthcare industry, barcodes used in the patient admittance process, to track medication and care admission, and identify patients throughout their entire stay. Barcode wristbands are typically created at the point of admission and updated continually on the patients’ needs. (Source: Health Management Technology).

They are also used to keep track of rental cars, airline luggage and even nuclear waste. Barcoded tickets allow attendees to enter sporting events, movie theaters, fairgrounds and public transportation.

Based on enthusiastic adoption around the world, barcodes such as the UPC have become a universal element of the modern world. While other systems have entered the automatic identification and data capture (AIDC) market, the simplicity, universality and low cost of barcodes have remained a standard in the retail industry over 40 years after the introduction of the first commercial barcode. They have also paved the way for related technologies including RFID and QR codes.

When you are ready to use your UPC Code all you need to do is create your listing on CD Baby, iTunes, eBay, Pandora, or any other location that requires you to have a barcode. No, this isn’t all of the stores where you can use your UPC Code, but there are some larger retail stores that will not accept them. You can read the information on our Barcode Questions page to find out the ones we know that will not accept a UPC Code other than directly from a company named GS1.