I could not find anything in the forums about how to obtain an UPC. If anyone has this information or a link please post it.
UPC
Fri, 04/25/2003 - 22:48
Tue, 02/04/2003 - 15:57
#1
UPC
http://www.uc-council.org/new_members/
This will tell you how to sign up for your company UPC id. After that you just assign product ID
Fri, 04/25/2003 - 22:48
#3
UPC
An interesting thread in the BoardGameDesign Yahoo Group mentions that you can avoid getting UPCs if you get ISBNs (which, IIRC, are less expensive). This may only apply to book-type products, though -- I don
Tue, 02/24/2004 - 19:16
#4
UPC
This is a very old thread, but since I had to research all this stuff I figured I'd share.
Any mass-market store will want UPC's as well as ISBN's. According to Ed Evans (Alien Menace Games) whose day job is in the book trade, the book trade wants both generally as well.
Some smaller chains use POS systems that key off UPCs as well.
But of course, UPC's are expensive - the start up cost is at least $750 and there is a yearly membership fee.
I decided to get them, because some of my games have the potential to go mass-market (or at least small chains, as Nobody But Us Chickens has) and it's better (and cheaper in the long run) to have the UPC's on the box already in case you need them than to have to do a whole new print run to get them on there.
Wed, 02/25/2004 - 10:29
#5
UPC
welcome, and thanks for reviving this thread, I hadn't spotted it.
In doing some digging for my sister-in-law who is independantly producing a cd, I found essentially a UPC co-op for indepent artists. This small firm esentially bought a block of upc's and sells them individually. Unfortunately I can't recall the website at the moment.
From your experience, would it be possible or feasible to set up this sort of thing for the small/independant game producers?
peace,
Tom
Wed, 02/25/2004 - 12:01
#6
UPC
Well, that will really only work properly if the products are all branded the same by the company that purchased the block.
The first X digits of the UPC Code are the company's personal code, and then the last Y digits code the product number. (X and Y depend on how many product numbers your company buys).
So any POS system that reads these codes, if integrated with the UCC records, will think all these products came from the same company.
This may or may not be an issue, but I personally wouldn't want my products numbered this way.
I think a better solution (for many more reasons than UPC codes) would be to have a cooperative publishing brand instead of several independant publishers - not only could they then share UPC codes but print runs, advertising dollars, shipping costs to distributors, etc. But that would be a whole other can of worms :wink:
I