Plain-language guides to GS1 Digital Link, Sunrise 2027, product passports and the rest of what your packaging is about to be asked to do.
GS1 Digital Link writes a product barcode as a web address. What that means, what it looks like, and why it matters before 2027.
The retail industry's target for scanning 2D barcodes at every checkout by the end of 2027, and what it asks of brands.
Linear barcodes are not disappearing overnight. What changes at the checkout, on the label, and in your data.
Both are QR codes to the eye. Only one of them survives the checkout, the regulator and the reprint.
Data in two dimensions: what QR codes and Data Matrix actually encode, and why retail is moving to them.
From the number under your barcode to a scannable, standards-correct 2D code, in three steps.
The path structure, the qualifier order, and the mistakes that make a Digital Link invalid.
The routing layer behind every Digital Link: what the standard requires and what to look for.
A working, standards-correct 2D code for your GTIN in under a minute, with the label check included.
Short answer: your numbers survive, your labels change. What stays, what is added, and when to move.
What ESPR's passport actually is, which products it will cover, and what the QR code on the pack has to do.
Textiles are first in the ESPR queue. The likely data set, the timeline, and what apparel brands should print now.
From 18 February 2027, industrial and EV batteries need a digital passport behind a QR code. The facts.
What Proposition 65 requires, what a QR code can and cannot do for it, and how to get the geography right.
The FDA's traceability rule in practice: which foods, what records, and why the batch is the unit that matters.
A working timeline of the EU's product passport rollout, from batteries to textiles and beyond.
X-dimension, quiet zones and scan distance: the arithmetic that decides whether your code prints scannable.
Two codes, one label, 50 millimetres: the transition-period constraint that decides small-format packaging.
Recalls are batch events. How lot-qualified codes turn a brand crisis into a surgical operation.
Export packs cross borders; their printed code cannot change. Geo-aware resolution is how one symbol serves every market.
Copy-proof is impossible; clone-evident is not. How cryptographic serials and scan behaviour expose fakes.
Seven checks that catch expensive plate mistakes before they are printed a million times.
The whole point of a resolver: the printed address is permanent, the answer is not.
Your website is measured to death and your packaging says nothing. Until it has a resolver behind it.
For every brand that has products but no product pages: the barcode can carry the whole experience.
Conformance, exit, longevity, honesty: a due-diligence sheet for the layer your packaging will depend on.
The honest cost breakdown: what GS1 charges, what resolvers charge, and what printing actually costs.
Nine concrete steps, roughly in order, from GTIN audit to analytics, for the 2D transition.
There is no GS1 certification body for resolvers. What conformance means, and how to verify any claim yourself.
Five checks you can run today, with a phone and a browser, to grade any pack's 2027 readiness.
Recall communication through the pack itself: precedence, language, and machines that need to know.
You have GTINs, products, and no developer. Everything in the 2D transition you can do for exactly zero.
Both are Sunrise-eligible. Where each wins, and why consumer packs mostly land on QR.
Humans, tills, wholesalers, regulators, bots: the five audiences behind your scan counts, and why telling them apart matters.
Packaging lives 2 to 15 years; the average URL does not. Designing printed links for time.
Where the resolver's page fits in your search strategy, and when to point codes at your own domain instead.
From a spreadsheet of GTINs to a folder of print-ready codes, with the failures reported by row.
Since the 2023 EU wine rules, e-labels are mainstream. What drinks brands should learn, and print, next.
Fifty years after the first beep, the barcode learns a second trick. A short history with a practical ending.