Retail-Ready Programmes: Ticketing, Polybagging, Barcoding and ASN

There is a category of supplier problem that has nothing to do with the product. The
bags are right, the quality is right, and the shipment still gets charged back — because
the tickets were in the wrong corner, the cartons were not labelled to standard, or no
advance ship notice arrived before the truck did.

Every large retailer publishes a vendor manual describing exactly how goods must
arrive. Most artisan suppliers have never read one. This post explains what those
requirements actually mean and what we can do, so that a buyer evaluating us can tell
quickly whether we can service their account.

Ticketing

A price ticket carries the retail price, the SKU, usually a barcode, and often size and
colour. The vendor manual specifies the ticket stock, the exact information layout, and
where on the garment or bag it attaches.

Position is not a detail. If the manual says the ticket attaches to the left handle at
the join and yours are on the right, that is a compliance failure regardless of how good
the bag is.

What we do: we ticket to specification, using tickets you supply or
tickets we print to your artwork. Attachment is by loop pin, string tag or swift attach
as specified. We photograph the first finished unit and send it for written approval
before ticketing the run — this single step prevents more chargebacks than anything else
in the process.

Polybagging

Individual polybagging protects goods in transit and lets a store put an item on the
floor without cleaning it. Requirements normally cover bag gauge, whether it is printed
with a suffocation warning, whether it is self-seal or heat-seal, and whether recycled or
recyclable material is mandated.

Sustainability requirements have tightened. Several buyers now specify recycled-content
poly or ban poly outright in favour of paper or reusable cotton. We can work to any of
these — tell us which, because they are not interchangeable and paper alternatives need
different handling in a sea container.

What we do: individual polybagging to specified gauge and marking,
with an optional silica sachet for sea freight. On natural fibre goods travelling by sea
we recommend the sachet regardless; humidity in a container is the main cause of
in-transit marking on straw.

Barcodes and GS1

This is the part that trips people up most, so let us be precise.

A GS1 barcode encodes a GTIN — a globally unique product number. GTINs are issued by
GS1 to the brand owner. If the goods are sold under the retailer’s own label, the
retailer provides the GTINs. If they are sold under your brand, you need your own GS1
company prefix and you assign GTINs yourself.

The same rule applies on marketplaces, where a bad barcode gets a listing suppressed
rather than a shipment rejected — see
selling on
Amazon, Etsy and Faire.

What a supplier cannot do is invent a barcode. Numbers bought from a reseller as
“cheap barcodes” are frequently recycled prefixes and will be rejected. If you are
building a brand you intend to sell through retail or on major marketplaces, register
with GS1 directly.

What we do: we print and apply barcode labels from GTINs you provide,
verify scan quality on every batch, and reject any label that fails. We do not issue
GTINs, because we cannot legitimately do so for your brand.

Carton labelling and packing

Vendor manuals typically specify master carton dimensions and maximum weight, whether
cartons may be mixed-SKU or must be solid packs, carton label format and placement, and
sequential carton numbering.

Weight limits matter more than buyers assume. Many manuals cap master cartons at 15 or
20 kg for manual handling. Straw bags are light and bulky, so we usually hit the volume
limit long before the weight limit — which is good news, but it means carton count is
driven by cube and your freight is priced on volumetric weight. Our
Incoterms and freight
guide works through how that is calculated.

What we do: solid or mixed packs as specified, carton labels to your
format on the faces required, sequential numbering, and a packing list matched line by
line to the invoice.

Advance ship notice (ASN)

An ASN is an electronic message sent before goods arrive, telling the retailer’s
distribution centre exactly what is coming, in how many cartons, with what inside each
one. Large retailers use it to book dock time and to receive by scanning a carton label
rather than opening every box.

Traditionally this is an EDI 856 transaction. Increasingly it is a portal upload or an
API call. Either way, an ASN that arrives late, or that does not match what is physically
in the cartons, generates a chargeback.

What we do: we produce the packing data — carton-level contents,
quantities, SKUs, carton IDs, weights and dimensions — in the format your systems need,
in time for the ASN to be transmitted before arrival. Where EDI translation is required
we work with your nominated provider rather than pretending to be one.

Being honest about our limits

We are a manufacturer that has learned retail compliance because our customers needed
it. There are things we do not do in-house:

• We are not an EDI value-added network. We supply the data; a translator sends it.
• We do not issue GTINs.
• We do not hold US or EU domestic inventory. Goods ship from Morocco. If your
  programme needs domestic replenishment from local stock, you need a 3PL, and we will
  ship into it.

Saying this up front saves everyone a wasted month. A buyer who needs a full domestic
vendor with EDI and stock holding should know that on day one.

The pilot

For any retail-ready programme we propose the same sequence: a sample round for fit and
finish, then a small pilot run — typically 200 to 500 units — packed exactly to your
vendor manual and delivered into one DC. Your receiving team tells us what failed. We fix
it. Then we scale.

The pilot exists to find compliance faults while they cost almost nothing. It is
cheaper than discovering them on 5,000 units.

Send us your vendor manual through the contact page. We will
read it and come back with a plain list of what we can meet, what needs a workaround, and
what we cannot do.