Now that you have your GS1 company prefix, you can assign a unique product number to each of your items. The amount of digits you can assign to your product number is based off of your company prefix. The GS1 takes into account the amount of prospective products your company plans on selling when you apply for you company prefix, and bases your company prefix from that. Companies that sell many different items will receive a shorter prefix, allowing them to assign a larger range of digits for their products, while companies that plan on selling a smaller amount of unique product will receive a larger number, limiting the amount of unique product numbers.

For organizations with a 6-digit Company Prefix, a 5-digit product number must be created. Companies with a 9-digit Company Prefix, can only create a 2-digit number. The Company Prefix and Product Numbers must always total 11-digits. (The 12th digit in a UPC is called the check digit and is mathematically calculated based off of the previous 11 digits.)

You need a unique product number for each variety of item you want to sell. For example, let's say you're selling t-shirts in two different styles - yellow and blue. Your blue small, medium, and large t-shirts would each have their own unique product numbers, while your yellow small, medium, and large t-shirts would also have their own different unique product numbers.






Product Style
Product Number
Full UPC (GTIN-12) Number
Blue Shirt - Small
00001
01234500001-0
Blue Shirt - Medium
00002
01234500002-7
Blue Shirt - Large
00003
01234500003-4
Yellow Shirt - Small
00004
01234500004-1
Yellow Shirt - Medium
00005
01234500005-8
Yellow Shirt - Large
00006
01234500006-5




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