In Egypt’s retail market, especially in the stationery sector, barcodes are a major yet invisible challenge. While they may seem like a small detail, barcodes are the backbone of modern inventory, sales, and logistics systems. But here’s the problem: many stationery products, particularly those imported from China, India, or produced locally, lack unique barcodes.
Real Example: The Roto Liquid Ball Pen
Take the Roto Liquid Ball Pen, a well-known product in Egypt. The individual pen and the pack of 12 pens both share the same barcode: 6224007206393.
That’s a massive problem. These two items are clearly not sold at the same price, and treating them as the same product leads to inaccurate inventory, confused POS systems, and broken e-commerce listings.
The Bigger Picture: Why It Matters
Even when products do have barcodes, they are often not unique, a black pen and a blue pen might share the same code, even if customer behavior and sales trends differ significantly. In other cases, products have no barcode at all, making them unsellable in supermarkets, e-commerce, or delivery apps.
Traditional stationery stores ignore this problem because solving it costs time, money, and technical expertise, and doesn’t offer an immediate return.
Meanwhile, big supermarket chains try to avoid it by only sourcing from well-established brands with clean barcodes, but that limits their range to expensive imports and ignores budget-friendly products most in demand by Egyptian shoppers.
How AlMaktaba AlSagheera Solves This
We don’t accept the barcode chaos. At AlMaktaba AlSagheera, we’ve built a local barcode system that gives each product its own unique code, even if the manufacturer didn’t. This enables:
- Clean inventory management
- Accurate sales analytics and demand forecasting
- Integration with supermarkets, apps, and online stores
The Result: Order, Not Chaos
With our barcode and product ID system, retailers don’t have to choose between variety and operational efficiency. You can sell:
- Affordable, high-demand products
- With full barcode compatibility
- In any retail environment: supermarket, website, or app
