The complete GPSR compliance guide for online sellers, free download

The EU General Product Safety Regulation rewrites the rules for every non-food consumer product sold in Europe. Whether you sell ten SKUs or ten thousand, the obligations are the same, and the enforcement machinery is already moving. We put together a comprehensive guide that covers everything an online seller needs to know, in one document.

What's inside the guide

The guide is structured as a practical reference, something you keep open while you audit your catalog, onboard a new supplier, or respond to a marketplace compliance request. Here's what it covers:

• GPSR obligations by role, what the regulation requires from manufacturers, importers, distributors, and fulfilment service providers, mapped to the specific articles that apply to each
• Technical documentation requirements, the exact documents you need per product category, including Declarations of Conformity, test reports, risk assessments, and safety data sheets
• Responsible person setup, how to appoint an EU-based responsible person, what their obligations are, and the liability implications of different arrangements
• Marketplace enforcement timelines, what Amazon, eBay, Kaufland, and other platforms are actually checking, and when automatic delisting kicks in
• Labeling and traceability, the physical and digital labeling requirements, including product identifiers, batch codes, and QR-based traceability
• Corrective action procedures, how to handle product recalls, Safety Gate notifications, and market surveillance authority inquiries
• Operational checklists, per-SKU compliance checklists you can use immediately, covering onboarding, periodic review, and channel-specific publishing
• Penalty framework, the fine structures across EU member states, including maximum penalties of up to €10 million or 4% of annual turnover

Preview: understanding your role under GPSR

One of the most common sources of confusion is which obligations apply to your business. The GPSR defines four categories of economic operator, each with distinct responsibilities. Most e-commerce sellers fall into one of two categories: importer (if you purchase products from a non-EU manufacturer and place them on the EU market) or distributor (if you resell products already placed on the market by another EU-based entity).

The distinction matters because importers bear heavier obligations. They must verify that the manufacturer has carried out the conformity assessment, that the technical documentation exists, and that the product bears the required markings. Distributors have a lighter burden, but they must still verify that the product carries a CE mark (where applicable), the required identification, and the responsible person's contact information.

If you sell on a marketplace under your own brand, even if you didn't manufacture the product, you may be treated as the manufacturer under GPSR. This is the scenario that catches the most sellers off guard, because it triggers the full set of manufacturer obligations including compiling technical documentation and conducting conformity assessments.

Preview: the technical documentation stack

For every product placed on the EU market, the responsible person must be able to produce technical documentation on request. In practice, this means assembling and maintaining a dossier for each SKU that includes:

1. A general description of the product and its intended use
2. Design and manufacturing drawings or specifications
3. A list of the harmonized standards or other technical specifications applied
4. Results of risk assessments, including identification of foreseeable misuse
5. Test reports from accredited laboratories
6. The EU Declaration of Conformity
7. Instructions and safety information in the languages of the destination markets

The guide walks through each element with practical examples, what a compliant Declaration of Conformity actually looks like, what to check when reviewing a supplier's test report, and how to identify gaps before a market surveillance authority does.

Preview: building a compliance workflow that scales

The final section of the guide addresses the operational reality: you have hundreds of SKUs, multiple suppliers, and several sales channels. Manually tracking compliance status in spreadsheets works until it doesn't, and the point of failure is usually invisible until an authority asks for documentation you can't produce.

We outline a structured workflow that covers four phases: onboarding (collecting documentation when a product enters your catalog), validation (reviewing evidence against requirements), maintenance (handling renewals, supplier changes, and regulation updates), and publishing (generating channel-specific compliance outputs from a single source of truth).