Retail Tag Guns: The Complete Guide for Stores
Three different tools get sold as a retail tag gun, and they do not do the same job. One prints a price onto a sticky label. One fires a plastic barb through fabric to hang a cardboard ticket. One is an electronic label printer with a handle. Shops order the wrong one every week.
This guide covers all three, what each costs to run, which store types use which, and how to choose without buying twice. Read it end to end and you will know exactly which retail tag gun belongs on your counter.
The short version: if you need a printed price on the item, buy a price label gun. If you need a cardboard ticket hanging from a garment, buy a barb gun. If it has to scan at the till, buy a label printer. Every retail tag gun problem starts with those three getting mixed up.
The Three Tools Called a Retail Tag Gun
1. The price label gun
On this retail tag gun, rotating print wheels set the characters. You squeeze the trigger, and a printed sticky label peels off the front for you to press onto the item. No power and no software.
This is the workhorse in most shops. It prices boxed stock, bagged stock, card packaging, shelf edges, hangers and the blank back of swing tickets. When people search for a price tag machine gun or a retail tag gun, this is almost always the tool they have in mind.
2. The barb or needle tagging gun
A hollow needle pushes a small plastic fastener through fabric or through an existing care label, attaching a cardboard swing ticket to the garment. It prints nothing at all. You print or write the ticket separately.
Searches for a retail clothing tag gun or a retail hang tag gun usually mean this one. It is the standard tool for garments hanging on a rail. Easy Tag does not currently stock a barb tagging gun, so if that is your job today, buy one from a supplier who sells them.
3. The electronic label maker gun
A keypad or a connected app sets the text, and a thermal print head burns it onto tape or die cut labels. This is the tool for barcodes, long product names and anything that needs to scan at the till.
A label maker gun costs considerably more than a mechanical price gun, needs power or charging, and needs its own proprietary tape or label stock. It earns that cost when you need barcodes. As a general purpose retail tag gun it is an expensive way to print a price.
Which Retail Tag Gun Your Store Needs
Work backwards from the product, not from the tool. Match the stock to the retail tag gun and the decision takes a minute.
- Boxed, bagged, carded or packaged stock: price label gun.
- Loose garments hanging on a rail: barb tagging gun for the ticket, price label gun for the ticket’s price.
- Anything that must scan at the till: electronic label printer.
- Perishable stock needing a date and a price: a two line price gun, covered in our guide to 1-line vs 2-line price guns.
- Stockroom bins, intake dates and pick locations: price label gun with 8 alphanumeric wheels.
Plenty of shops run two of the three. A boutique keeps a barb gun by the rail and a price label gun on the counter. A grocery keeps a date gun at the counter and a barcode printer in the office. One retail tag gun rarely covers a whole shop, and pretending otherwise is how people end up disappointed with a tool that was never designed for the job.
How a Price Label Gun Works
Understanding the mechanism helps you judge a retail tag gun listing and fix a jam.
- The label roll sits in a cradle under the top cover. Labels are die cut onto a backing strip with a row of small holes along the edges.
- A sprocket wheel engages those holes and drags the strip forward one label per squeeze.
- The print head carries the character wheels. The trigger presses it down onto the label as the strip passes.
- An ink roller sits above the wheels and re-inks them on every stroke.
- The peel edge at the front pulls the backing paper away at a sharp angle, so the label lifts and you press it onto the product.
Every part of that chain is mechanical. Nothing needs charging, nothing updates, and a retail tag gun of this type keeps working when the till system goes down.
What Each Tool Costs to Run
The purchase price of a retail tag gun is the small number. Consumables are the real cost.
Price label gun
Label rolls and ink rollers. If your gun takes standard MX-5500 compatible rolls, many suppliers stock them and the price stays competitive. A gun built around a proprietary label size hands your running cost to one seller.
Barb tagging gun
Plastic barb clips, sold in bags of thousands, plus replacement needles. Needles bend and break with use, so budget for spares. Clip length matters: too short and it will not pass through a thick seam, too long and it dangles.
Electronic label maker gun
Proprietary tape or label cartridges, plus batteries or charging. Cartridge prices vary widely by brand and the cartridges are rarely interchangeable, so check the cost per label before buying the machine.
Run the numbers on a year of pricing at your volume. A cheap tag gun machine with expensive consumables costs more by month four than a fairly priced kit with common refills.
Choosing a Price Label Gun
Five criteria for a retail tag gun, in order of how much each will affect your year.
- Label standard. Search for the refill labels before you buy the gun. More than one supplier, or walk away.
- Digit count. Eight wheels hold a price plus a date or a season code. Six fills up fast.
- Line count. One line for prices. Two lines when a date must sit above the price.
- What is in the box. A bare gun needs labels and ink before it prints anything. Compare total cost.
- Trigger and body. Several hundred squeezes per delivery session. Stiff triggers end up in a drawer.
Our full buying guide for small retail stores works through each of these with the store type matched to the gun.
Judge any gun on the kit, not the headline price: labels, spare ink and a scraper in the box save a second order in week one. Easy Tag sells the 5500EOS as that kind of kit in red and blue.
Which Store Types Use Which Tool
Boutiques and clothing shops
A barb gun for the rail, a price label gun for boxes, bags, accessories and swing ticket prices. Neither retail tag gun replaces the other here. Sticky labels do not belong on knitwear, suede or anything a customer tries on. Our guide to pricing clothing in a boutique covers placement item by item.
Convenience stores, delis and bakeries
Date marking drives the choice. A two line gun prints a use by date above the price in one squeeze. If dates live elsewhere, one line is enough.
Thrift stores, charity shops and consignment
Volume and constant repricing. An eight digit gun lets you code the intake week onto every item, which makes a scheduled markdown rule enforceable. A retail store tag gun of the label type is the only tool most of these shops need.
Market stalls, fairs and pop ups
No power, no signal, and a long day. A mechanical retail tag gun wins. Carry spare ink rollers in the box with your stock.
Hardware, auto parts and general retail
Price plus a bin code on one row. Barcodes come from a separate printer at the back.
Warehouses and stockrooms
Bin locations, intake dates and batch codes rather than prices. Eight alphanumeric wheels handle all three, and a tag gun for retail back of house work saves a lot of handwriting.
How to Use a Retail Tag Gun Without Jamming It
Four habits prevent most of the faults people write reviews about, and they apply to every retail tag gun that feeds labels off a roll.
- Peel off the first 25 labels of a new roll. The leading edge of a fresh roll rarely sits square, and lifted corners catch inside the label path.
- Seat the backing holes on the sprocket teeth. Close the inner gate over them before you close the base plate. Skipping the gate is the most common loading mistake.
- Prime a new ink roller on scrap paper. Five or six squeezes before you touch stock, because the first labels print grey while the ink spreads.
- Print a test label before every run. A wheel one position off is invisible on the gun and obvious on 200 mispriced items.
Full instructions, including the fixes for bunching labels and faint print, are in our guide on how to load a price gun.
What Else a Small Shop Needs Besides the Gun
A tag gun on its own runs for a few weeks and then stops being useful, because the consumables run out and the jobs it cannot do start piling up. Here is what a small shop actually keeps in the drawer alongside it.
Spare labels, bought before you need them
Work out your annual use once: count what you price in a normal week, multiply by 52, then add a third for repricing and markdowns. A shop pricing 100 items a week needs around 7,000 labels a year. Buy in sealed rolls rather than one large pack, because a roll sitting open in a warm stockroom goes gummy and jams the gun.
A spare ink roller
Print goes faint long before it goes blank, so most shops carry on with a dying roller and produce a week of grey labels nobody can read. Keep at least one spare and change it the day the print stops being crisp. The Easy Tag 5500EOS kit ships with three, one fitted and two in the box, in Blue or Red at $24.99.
A label scraper
Returns, repricing and end-of-season markdowns all leave old labels to remove. A plastic scraper lifts them without gouging packaging or leaving glue behind. A thumbnail does not, and neither does a knife.
Markdown stickers in one colour
Bright stickers only work while they stay scarce. Pick one colour for reduced stock, use it nowhere else, and shoppers will find every markdown in the shop from the doorway. Fluorescent orange and yellow are the two US retail already understands. Percent-discount stickers come pre-printed, which saves setting the gun for a one-off markdown.
Sign holders for anything longer than a price
A price gun prints eight characters. Offer terms, opening hours, allergen notes and bundle maths all need more room than that. An 8.5 x 11 inch acrylic sign holder takes a standard letter sheet, mounts on a wall with pre-applied adhesive strips and needs no drilling, so you can change the message by swapping the paper. Easy Tag sells them in packs from 1 to 24, from $7.99, on the site and on Amazon.
Tags and fasteners, if you sell garments
Sticky labels lift threads on knitwear and leave residue on silk. Clothing needs a swing ticket or card tag attached with a plastic barb or a stitching fastener, with the price printed on the ticket rather than the fabric. Waterproof plastic tags hold up on outdoor and workwear stock, and a stitching gun attaches them without piercing the garment where it shows.
A written labeling rule
The cheapest item on this list costs nothing. Write down which label goes where on a pack, which colour means reduced, and who checks the floor each morning. Pin it in the stockroom. Two staff working to two different habits produce the same result as no system at all.
The Easy Tag 5500EOS kit at $24.99 covers the first three items on this list in one box: the gun, 5,000 labels as 10 rolls of 500, three ink rollers and a label scraper.
Where to Buy
Office supply chains, restaurant and janitorial supply houses, packaging distributors and online sellers all carry them, with different stock levels and different bundles. Supply houses have the best local hit rate for a retail tag gun and the weakest websites, so call rather than search. Our guide on where to buy a price gun covers the local options and the four questions to ask before you drive over.
The Easy Tag 5500EOS
The Easy Tag 5500EOS in Blue is a price label gun: 8 digits, one line, MX-5500 style body, standard MX-5500 compatible labels. It ships at $24.99 with the gun, 5,000 white labels, 3 ink rollers and a label scraper. The Easy Tag 5500EOS in Red is the same kit in red.
Where it fits: prices, dates and codes on packaging, boxes, card, bags, hangers, swing tickets, shelf edges and stockroom bins. Eight alphanumeric wheels, mechanical action, nothing to charge.
Where it does not fit: attaching swing tickets to fabric (buy a barb gun), printing barcodes (buy a label printer), and printing a date above a price on one label (buy a two line gun). A retail tag gun bought for the wrong job is money spent twice, and we would rather you spent it once.
Kit detail: the 5,000 labels arrive as 10 rolls of 500, sized 21mm x 12mm (0.83in x 0.47in). The body is reinforced ABS plastic, the gun weighs 0.64 kg (about 1.4 lb), and returns run 30 days from delivery, unused and in original packaging.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is a retail tag gun?
The name covers three tools. A price label gun prints a price onto a sticky label and applies it. A barb tagging gun pushes a plastic fastener through fabric to attach a swing ticket. An electronic label maker gun prints text or barcodes onto tape. Check the product photos before ordering, because listings use the words interchangeably.
What is the difference between a tag gun and a price gun?
A price gun prints. A tag gun in the barb sense attaches. If you want a printed price on the item, you want a price label gun. If you want a cardboard ticket hanging from a garment, you want a barb gun.
Can a tag gun machine print barcodes?
A mechanical price gun cannot. It prints characters from rotating wheels only. Barcodes need a thermal or laser label printer. Most shops run both, using the price gun for shelf and item pricing and the printer for scannable labels.
How do you use a retail tag gun?
Load the label roll, seat the backing holes on the sprocket teeth, close the gate and the base plate, then set the price on the wheels. Print a test label on scrap paper, then squeeze once per item and press the label onto the product. Prime a new ink roller with five or six squeezes first.
What labels does a price gun use?
One line guns commonly take MX-5500 compatible rolls, the most widely stocked size. Two line guns take a taller label in a less common size. Check which size your retail tag gun takes before ordering refills, because the sizes are not interchangeable.
Is a label maker gun better than a price gun?
Better for barcodes and long text. Worse for speed and cost on plain prices. An electronic unit needs power, proprietary cartridges and setup time. A mechanical price gun prints a price in one squeeze for a fraction of the cost per label.
What is a price tag machine gun used for?
Pricing shelf stock, boxes, bags, card packaging, swing tickets and stockroom bins. Shops also use the spare print wheels for received dates, season codes and batch numbers, which makes scheduled markdowns easier to manage.
How much should a retail tag gun cost?
Judge the total, not the sticker. A bare gun still needs labels and an ink roller before it prints. The Easy Tag 5500EOS kit is $24.99 including 5,000 labels and 3 ink rollers, so nothing else is needed on day one.
Where to Go Next
Sort the retail tag gun type first, then the specification, then the supplier. Read the buying guide for small retail stores if you are comparing models, the one line versus two line comparison if dates matter in your shop, and the loading guide once your gun arrives.
If you already know you need a one line price label gun, the Easy Tag 5500EOS in Blue and the Easy Tag 5500EOS in Red both ship complete at $24.99.