How to put a barcode on clothing tags for every size and colour

Give every size and colour its own number, then print that number on the swing tag, black bars on matt card with a clear margin each side. Keep the woven label for your brand name and size.

Where the barcode on clothing tags goes

A barcode on clothing tags has one job. It lets the till find the right item and the right price in under a second. The cashier scans, the screen shows "Linen shirt, olive, size M, ₹1,299", and the sale is done. Your stock count drops by one for that exact shirt.

That only works if every size and every colour has its own number. A shirt in four colours and five sizes is not one product to a till. It is twenty. This post walks you through building that list, then printing it on the right tag.

If you want the longer story of what a barcode does and does not do, the barcode guide covers it. Here we stay with clothes.

Build the size and colour matrix

Start with one style. Write its colours across the top of a sheet and its sizes down the side. Each box where a row meets a column is one variant, and each variant gets one number.

Take a cotton kurta in three colours: indigo, rust and white. You stock it in S, M, L, XL and XXL. That is three columns and five rows, so fifteen boxes. You need fifteen numbers for this style.

Count every style this way before you order anything. A small first collection often looks like this: four styles, about three colours each, five sizes each. That comes to sixty numbers. Add a few spare for a colour you add mid-season.

Some changes always need a new number. A new colour, a new size, a new fit such as slim against regular, or a new fabric. Some changes do not. A new print run of the same tag, or the same shirt restocked, keeps its number.

Never give two colours the same number to save a few rupees. The till will sell an olive shirt as a white one, and your stock count will be wrong by the end of the first week.

Name each variant before you number it

Make a spreadsheet with one row per variant. Use these columns: style name, colour, size, your own short code, MRP, and the barcode number.

Your own short code is for you, not the scanner. Keep it to letters and a size, such as KUR-IND-M for the indigo kurta in medium. Staff can read it at a glance on a shelf.

Fill the barcode column only when the numbers arrive. Paste them in, one per row, and then check the row count matches. Fifteen rows, fifteen numbers. This sheet is the file your till or online store imports, so a typo here becomes a wrong sale later.

Swing tags: where the barcode lives

The swing tag is the card that hangs from the garment on a loop or a plastic fastener. It is the right home for the barcode. It is flat, stiff, easy to reach, and it comes off before the customer wears the piece.

A good swing tag for a shop counter is about 50 mm wide and 90 mm tall, cut from 300 to 350 gsm card. Matt card scans better than gloss, because gloss throws back the scanner's light.

Put the barcode on the back, low down, with the size and colour printed in plain words just above it. Leave a clear margin of white space on both sides of the bars, at least 3 mm. The scanner needs that gap to know where the code starts and ends.

At full size the barcode is about 37 mm wide and 26 mm tall. You can shrink it a little to fit a narrow tag, but do not go below about 80 percent of that size. Do not cut the bars shorter to save space either. Short bars are the most common reason a tag fails at the till.

Print black bars on white or cream card. Avoid red, orange or pale bars, because most scanners read with red light and those colours vanish under it. Keep the punch hole for the fastener well above the bars, not through them.

For small runs, a thermal transfer label printer and blank tags work well. For a first collection of a few hundred pieces, a print shop can run the tags with a different number on each one, if you send them the spreadsheet in order.

Woven labels: keep them for the brand

The woven label is the one stitched into the neck or side seam. It carries your brand name and sometimes the size. It is not a place for a barcode.

A weave has texture. The thread pattern breaks the edge of each bar, so the scanner reads noise. Woven labels also sit inside the garment, where a cashier cannot reach them without pulling the piece apart on the counter.

Printed satin care labels are flatter and can hold a barcode, but they curl, they fade in the wash, and they sit in the side seam. Use them for washing symbols and fibre content. If you want a second scannable copy, put a small sticker with the same number on the poly bag instead.

Scan before you attach

Before you tag a full batch, print one tag for each variant in a style. Scan each with the same type of scanner your shop uses. A phone app is fine for a first check.

Look at what the screen shows. The style, the colour and the size should all match the tag in your hand. If the indigo medium comes up as rust large, the error is in your sheet, not the print. Fix the row, reprint, and scan again.

Then attach tags in one sitting per style, working through the sizes in order. Keep each size in its own pile until it is tagged. Most mix-ups happen when two sizes of the same colour sit side by side on a table.

If you plan to sell in other shops or online as well as at your own counter, tell us where you sell. We will tell you which numbers suit those places before you print a single tag.

Order the numbers for your matrix

Once your sheet shows the total count, order that many numbers plus a small spare. Use code STARTUP10 for 10% off one order per account. It is valid until 31 December 2026 or for the first 100 uses on this site, whichever comes first.

You can order numbers for every size and colour in your range from the EAN-13 packs.