New Barcodes Present Opportunity For VARs

By Brian Albright, Business Solutions magazine.

A new barcode standard for marking fresh foods and coupons will present new opportunities for VARs to sell upgraded scanning systems to their retail customers over the next four years.

While the familiar UPC code has been the dominant barcode in the retail space for decades, international standards group GS1 introduced a smaller symbology, GS1 DataBar, several years ago to provide a better alternative for marking fresh foods, produce, coupons, and small items. DataBar (originally called Reduced Space Symbology) can encode more information in a smaller space than the UPC, allowing manufacturers to provide variable data (like expiration dates or weights) in the codes.