Barcode & Shipping Stickers for Footwear

The job the print has to do

Single-vendor production is the practical reason exporters in footwear use Fotoset. Nothing is sub-contracted out for lamination or screen work, so the sheet does not travel, the schedule does not slip against another factory's queue, and one plant is accountable for the finished barcode and shipping stickers.

In footwear, barcode and shipping stickers is used for work of this kind:

• Retail unit barcodes applied to polybags, header cards and boxes
• Inner and outer carton identification for export shipments
• Size and article stickers applied at the packing table
• Shelf-ready and warehouse location labels

In this sector the printed set around the product usually includes the following, and Fotoset can supply all of it on one order rather than leaving the buyer to co-ordinate three suppliers:

• Printed shoe boxes and inner cartons, with size and article marking on the end panel
• Swing tags attached to the pair, carrying material, size and standard information
• Insole and sock prints carrying the brand and size
• Leather-shape swatch tags stating the upper and lining material

Stock, size and format

Size and format range: From 20 x 10 mm article stickers to 210 x 148 mm carton labels, supplied in sheets or on rolls with a stated core and winding direction. Boxes are usually litho-laminated E or B flute for transit strength, with 250 to 300 GSM printed faces.

Printing is by sheet-fed offset for process and spot colours, with silkscreen used where an opaque white, a metallic or a fluorescent is specified. Both processes are in the same building, so a combination job runs without moving the sheet.

• Offset and silkscreen printing for the printed field
• High-resolution barcode imaging with bar width reduction set for the chosen substrate
• Verification against the print quality grade agreed with the buyer

Choosing the substrate

• White semi-gloss self-adhesive paper with permanent acrylic adhesive
• Matt paper for thermal transfer overprint at the packer's end
• White and clear polyester and polypropylene for damp or oily handling
• Removable adhesive stock where the label must lift cleanly from a finished product

Finishing is carried out on the same site as printing. That includes film lamination in gloss, matt and soft-touch, spot UV, foil blocking, embossing, die-cutting, creasing, punching and eyeletting, so a barcode and shipping stickers order leaves as a finished item rather than as printed sheets.

• Kiss-cut on sheets or rolls, sprocketed or plain
• Gloss or matt varnish over the printed area, barcode field left free of high-gloss varnish
• Sequential numbering and variable data
• Roll winding to a specified core size and unwind direction

Regulatory content on this item

Fotoset prints the marks and declarations supplied by the customer and does not alter them. Artwork is checked before plate-making and any mark that will not reproduce cleanly is queried in writing. For footwear, the content that commonly appears on this item includes:

• CE marking and EN ISO 20345 or EN ISO 20347 references on safety footwear
• Material pictograms for upper, lining, insole and outsole
• BIS licence marking for footwear sold in India
• Country of origin marking on the box and the carton
• Recycling marks and paper-stream instructions on the packaging

Languages

English is standard on the box; European retail commonly adds German, French, Spanish and Italian on the care sheet. Indian domestic supply adds Hindi and Bengali.

Ordering pattern

• Orders concentrate ahead of European spring and autumn ranges
• Safety footwear runs follow industrial procurement cycles and repeat through the year
• Size-set changes mid-season create short repeat runs of end-panel labels

Artwork and pre-press

• Press-ready PDF, version 1.4 or later, with 3 mm bleed on all four sides and crop marks outside the trim.
• Native Adobe Illustrator or CorelDRAW files accepted, with fonts converted to outlines and linked images embedded.
• Images at 300 dpi at final printed size. Line art and barcode artwork supplied as vector wherever possible.
• Colour built in CMYK. Spot colours called out by Pantone reference in the file and in the purchase order.
• Die line supplied on a separate named layer, in a spot colour set to overprint, not on the artwork layer.