Amazon dominates the e-commerce space and has become an essential sales channel for large brands and small e-commerce businesses and resellers. Dealing with millions of transactions daily and acting as a hub marketplace for traders, Amazon faces a challenge in preventing counterfeit goods from entering their fulfilment centres and onto their marketplace platform.
How Amazon is Tackling Counterfeit Goods
Amazon has introduced the Amazon Transparency Programme to prevent counterfeit products from entering their marketplace supply chain whilst enabling end-user buyers to verify the authenticity of their purchase. There simple, yet effective scheme encodes transparency data into the product label design – with a 2D Data Matrix barcode.
How do Transparency Labels work for Amazon?
Each barcode is a unique alphanumeric non-sequential code, a serialisation number that is created by Transparency for each brands product. The numbers can’t be copied as they are unique to each individual product and Transparency are the only organisation to access and issue the codes. This centralisation creates a secure ledger for issued codes which consumers can easily scan and check once they make a purchase.
The 2D Data Matrix barcode contains information including:
- A unique alphanumeric non-sequential code supplied by Amazon
- The items ID which can be an EAN, UPC, SKU or GTIN codes
- Manufacturing date
- Manufacturing place
- Expiry date
- Details regarding material or ingredients
The Transparency code is a smart way to create a system for preventing counterfeit goods to enter the Amazon marketplace but without adding any additional layers of processing to the Amazon fulfilment centre operations. Goods that are fulfilled by Amazon are simply scanned as they come in either accepted or rejected by the received department and make sure only authentic products are sent out. For those re-sellers, using Amazon as an online marketplace and fulfilling their own order directly, they have to simply provide Amazon with a transparency code for each unit they ship through Amazon.
How to Implement the Amazon Transparency Labels?
- Decide which products you wish to enrol on the transparency scheme.
- Register your brands with Transparency.
- Apply transparency codes on your products.
- Issue merchant fulfilled item codes to Amazon.
How to Create the Amazon Transparency Labels?
Ideally, businesses will want to incorporate the transparency matrix codes into their product labels at the time of manufacturer. This may require a redesign of their existing product labels and establishing labelling automation to implement serialisation using data taken from a database. For businesses not able to do this or for those merchants who have existing stock that is not labelled with the Amazon transparency codes there is a simple interim solution.
Seagull BarTender 2019 software has developed Interim Amazon transparency labels that will allow businesses to affix a secondary ‘over label’ containing the transparency matrix code to their products. Bartender includes several pre-built label templates that comply with the branding and application guidelines that the transparency programme stipulates.
These templates include all of the following required elements in the format, layout and dimensions:
- Transparency Logo
- Transparency all to action and description
- Printed product ID
- Data Matrix ECC 200 Symbology
Sellers must request their codes from Amazon. These codes are transmitted to traders via CSV and are listed as “Public_code” column. Then they complete the following:
1. Download the free trial for Bartender Starter edition.
2. Download the Bartender templates and complete the details.
3. Print & apply the transparency labels
Bartender labelling software makes creating Amazon transparency label simple. The cost-effective solution is ideal for small businesses and as an interim solution for larger brand owners.
At GSM Barcoding we have over 40 years’ experience helping industry with barcode and labelling needs. As a Bartender business partner, we can help and support you to choose the right Bartender edition and select the right printing and label solutions for your needs. If you would like a free Bartender trial or to speak to one of our label advisors, please contact us via the enquiry form below.
