The Global Language of Business

Alibaba and 40 other Chinese e-commerce companies committed to adopting GS1 standards

 The first meeting following the publication of the ‘E-commerce Joint Proposal on Barcode Application’ was held in Chengdu on 4th June at the 2015 ECR China Conference, hosted by GS1 China and ECR China.

More than 500 delegates and guests from different industries joined the meeting, including retailers, manufacturers, IT companies, consulting companies and logistics companies. The group had good discussions about omni-channel strategies and company reform (change management).

The ‘E-commerce Joint Proposal on Barcode Application’ is a statement co-signed by more than 40 Chinese companies active in the e-commerce sector, including Alibaba and JD.com among others.

The co-signing companies all promised to respect the principle that each unique trade item should have its own GS1 GTIN encoded onto a GS1 barcode. Signatories of the proposal also promised to insist that manufacturers submit product information in a timely fashion to the ‘China Service Platform on Commodity Information’.

Chenghai Zhang, Co-Chair of ECR China and President & CEO of GS1 China pointed out that barcodes will play an important role in modernizing and developing China’s logistics and foreign trade.

Zhang believes that the launch of the activity described in the ‘E-commerce Joint Proposal on Barcode Application’ will greatly improve China's e-commerce and e-retailer business development and enable e-commerce companies to provide even better service to their customers.