That’s a really clever and simple plan but doing anything like applying stickers, correctly, by hand or robot, can add cost ranging from $<surprising> to $<shoc

That’s a really clever and simple plan but doing anything like applying stickers, correctly, by hand or robot, can add cost ranging from $<surprising> to $<shocking>. Maybe they have a variation of your idea where they inkjet a serial number onto a conveyor belt of incoming items or add a super-cheap chip of some kind.