Setting up the right barcoding system for our business

Shopify Apps
,
1

Hey!

We are a tableware prop & event hire business that have been live on Shopify since feb 2023. We have products available to hire for prop purposes (so only a few in stock if not just a one off) and we have bulk stock that is hired for events. Products vary from small spoons, ramekins to large baskets, platter plates etc

Currently we do not have any of our products printed with barcodes on them but we do have the barcodes already generated in Shopify using the app ‘retail barcoding labels’. We also have our own SKU codes where we have labeled only our props with this SKU code manually.

As we grow quickly we need to be able to manage our stock and what is being hired in and out and we believe barcoding products is the best way (please let me know if not).

Firstly we have bought a socket mobile device that has not been used yet and we want to know if A) this is the best barcode scanner that can be used for this style of service. Please advise?

B) Since we have small products such as spoons, forks etc we need to be able to print barcode stickers small enough to stick on the products. When looking on the templates, even the smallest ones used for jewellery do not look small enough?

C) The stickers we need are stickers that need to be durable enough to be washed in industrial washing machines. Is this a thing? Can machines be bought for office use for us to print out our own that will be still scannable, durable and printable.

D) We are using Mac systems so we need to be able to scan and use these systems using the above socket mobile and sticker machines.

I would really appreciate some help in terms of being able to barcode our products correctly and the most efficiently so we can start the process correctly, so any advice for a start up hire company then I welcome!

Looking forward to hearing from you!

Megan

2

Stickers that can survive washing machines sound unfeaseble, but if you are set on barcodes you could look into laser-engraving the barcodes onto the items for a premium.

Also, make sure to pick the correct barcodes type for your use-case. Your run-of the mill black bars may not do so well when scaled down to the size of a fork. Data Matrix codes (the ones that look sort of like qr-codes) are common when you just have a few millimeters of space to print on. The best scanner would be the scanner that can read that type of code reliably at that scale.

If it were me I would barcode my inventory bins for when items go out. For when items come in I would get a super accurate scale and catalogue the weight of each piece of inventory. When something comes in, find its SKU by weighing it and referencing the catalogue. Images of the items in the catalogue can help if many items have the same approximate weight. This can be an excel sheet at first.