Google Shopping and T-Shirts

[batcountrycloth]

Hi!

I have searched and searched and searched on this and cannot find any simple answer.

I run a T-Shirt website where I design and print my own shirts. 

I havent been that great at marketing it so I tried to use Kit - which lead me to getting the Google Shopping app, which has in turn led me to this constant circle of having my products in Pending Status and apparently its because:

"Barcode is missing a barcode or mpn.."

I have all of my products checked to be Custom because I have no barcode or any of those acronyms for them but I am not sure what to do now?  I see some others are/have been in the same situation as me on Reddit with Shopify and Google but nobody seems to have been able to get past this issue.

Has anyone here been able to solve it?

[Tira]

Hi, @batcountrycloth!

My name is Tira and I work at Shopify.

I can understand that the message returned by Google on missing barcodes/MPN is confusing. It sounds like you've done a lot of digging to find out how to resolve this so that you can push your products through. I would be happy to provide more detail on why you're getting this message and also how you can resolve it.

Google relies on unique identifiers such as the barcode, MPN, or GTIN to help identify a product and make it easier for customers to find a product when searching. When setting a product to "custom", Google has to review the product and determine whether they've seen the product before, or if it's a product that they haven't seen yet. If it's a product they haven't seen yet, they will approve of the product without a unique identifier. However, if Google believes it's a product that they've seen before, then they would not approve of it, then you will need to request an exemption from Google. You can learn more about unique identifiers here.

To request an exemption, you can follow the steps listed in Google's documentation here: Understanding account-level enforcement for product data violations.

Another option is to purchase a barcode/MPN and then unmark your products from "custom" and go through the approval process. You can purchase a barcode, MPN, or GTIN here: Buy a barcode from GS1.

After the pending state, once Google has reviewed your products and approved of them, they will automatically get published to the Google Merchant Center. You can review our help doc on this here: Product status.

Let me know if that helps! 

[batcountrycloth]

Thanks!  I just checked my Merchant Center and everything seems to be approved and running on Googles side of things but my app within Shopify still says products are in Pending status.

How do I fix that?  Remove the app and add it again?

[Tira]

Hey again!

That's great that your products have all been approved in the Google Merchant Center.

It sounds like there may be a delay in updating the status from Pending to Approved in the Shopify admin. I would like to take a closer look at your store to see your Google Shopping app and if needed, I will forward your store over to our technical team to so that they can recheck the status in the backend so that your products are no longer "Pending" in the Shopify admin. This is a delay that our developers are aware of, and are working on a fix to prevent this from happening in the future.

I've gone ahead and sent an email to the email listed in your profile. Could you please take a look? 

Thank you!

[Bigboss322]

I run my own T-shirt business. I started a few years ago and what I used to do was buy plain shirts from a hypermarket and print my designs at the local printing shop, not really a money fountain to be exact. Then I started doing some research on the market and I tried a few online printing companies, but was not satissfied with the overall communiation between me and them. My friend recommened to me this one company and after a few purchases I was sure this was the one I would go now with. The key is to really have a good relation with the supplier you choose and to be content with the final product.