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Comment by elchief | Hacker News Reader

I noticed at line in Costco the cashier's assistant rearranged by stuff on the belt to have the barcodes facing up and in the same direction.

Costco could probably save some money by putting barcodes on every side of everything.

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> Costco could probably save some money by putting barcodes on every side of everything.

That's easier said than done because Costco doesn't sell only private label items like Aldi.

In Germany Aldi has such a market power that even for the few name-brand item they stock[1] they can demand different packaging from the manufactures. That includes not only barcodes but sometimes even more explicit ingredient lists.

[1]: Recently they started to stock more name-brand items due to a strategy shift. The other chains are not very amused.

They have enough buying power - they could probably mandate it

They have their own Item Number system. Even general-retailer items sold elsewhere often have the (Costco) Item Number on their packaging.

Costco could just print their own and add it to the packaging.

I'm not sure that the time needed to affix the label to every product is less than the saved time due to faster scanning.

Costco certainly asks for custom packaging. No other retailer is going to put an SD card or bottle of vitamins in a 2 sqft blister pack.

When Aldi went to the US, their management ended up with a whole genre of in-jokes about the concept of "cashier's assistants". I forgot the details but some were quite funny.

It's pretty easy to do this yourself as you put the items onto the conveyer, with large items in the cart at least getting the UPC code up.

I do this at WalMart when I'm in a hurry.

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