Home › GPSR responsible person
Regulation (EU) 2023/988 · Article 16
Etsy applies the same rule as the giants, and small shops feel it first.
A one-person studio selling candles into Germany is covered by exactly the same regulation as a factory shipping pallets. Etsy asks for the responsible person in the listing form, and shops that skip it lose their EU buyers.
Handmade does not mean exempt
The General Product Safety Regulation looks at the product, not at the size of the maker. If it is a consumer product and it is placed on the EU market, it needs an economic operator established in the Union.
There is no threshold below which the rule stops applying: no turnover floor, no exemption for one-off pieces, no carve-out for craft.
Where it hurts a small shop most
Larger sellers absorb a suppressed listing. A shop with forty listings and one product line does not: EU traffic simply stops, and it stops on the listings that took the longest to rank.
The recovery is quick once the field is filled, but the ranking loss during the gap is real.
The cost question, honestly
For a small shop the appointment has to cost less than the EU revenue it protects, which for most makers it comfortably does. What matters more is that the plan covers unlimited products, so growing the catalogue does not grow the bill.
Per-SKU pricing is the trap here: it punishes exactly the shops that list many small variations.
What lands in your inbox
The signed mandate, the label block ready to paste, the certificate and a link that shows your status to anybody who asks for it.
Marketplaces and customs officers do not read attachments. They check a name against a register, which is exactly what we give them.
The check happens without you
By the time an authority or a platform looks at your product, you are not in the room. Whatever you left on the label has to speak for itself.
A resolvable code speaks; a scanned document does not.
Questions we are asked
I only sell a handful of items to the EU. Do I still need this?
Yes. The regulation attaches to the product crossing into the Union, not to how many you sell. One shipment is enough to bring the obligation with it.
Can I name myself if I live outside the EU?
No. The point of the rule is that an authority has someone to reach inside the Union. An address outside it does not satisfy the requirement, however willing you are to answer.
What if I make everything myself?
Then you are the manufacturer, and the obligation to appoint a responsible person is yours. Being the maker does not remove the requirement; it is what creates it.
Small catalogues are the ones that recover fastest, because there is nothing to rebuild — only a field to fill and a name that holds up.
Appoint us and put the block on your label today
Designation is issued the same working day the form and payment are complete. Unlimited products on every plan.
See plans and appoint us