Amazon Introduces New Product Safety & Compliance Features
All GPSR requirements that come into effect from December 13, 2024 can be found in this article.
At the beginning of the new year, Amazon has introduced innovations in the area of "Product Safety and Compliance with Regulations". In this article, you'll learn how these changes affect sellers or vendors on Amazon and whether you are affected by these changes.
If you are a seller or vendor on Amazon, it is your responsibility to ensure that your products including packaging comply with applicable laws. So you must comply with the Product Safety and Compliance Guidelines for all marketplaces where you sell. These guidelines affect certain product groups such as electronic devices, toys, chemicals, medicines, cosmetics, textile products and food
Amazon has set up a help page for this purpose, so you can get an overview of all applicable regulations for products sold on Amazon.
Amazon Requires Proof of Product Compliance
To verify whether your offered products comply with the mentioned laws and government certifications, Amazon now requires proof from you.
Amazon writes about this:
When you offer a product, you must provide the required information and display it on the product detail page. We reserve the right to remove an offer where required markings, warnings and labels are missing.
But what do these requirements mean for you?
Products in your product catalog that require documents for markings, warnings and compliance must be submitted to Amazon by a deadline set by Amazon. To make it easier to submit these documents, Amazon has launched a new "Dashboard for Compliance with Product Safety Guidelines (Compliance)".
Products in your product catalog that display markings, warnings and safety labels on the product packaging must now display all sides of the packaging together with warnings, markings and labels as product images on the product detail page. Amazon has introduced a new image variant with the image type: "Product Safety and Compliance" for this purpose.
Products in your product catalog that are marked with a CE marking and are sold in the European Union must now mandatorily contain information about a responsible person or company. To make it easier to appoint responsible persons in the future, Amazon has introduced the so-called "VP Dashboard" at the beginning of this year.
Below we explain to you with which functions you can submit the required proof to Amazon.
Dashboard for Compliance with Product Safety Guidelines
To simplify compliance management, Amazon provides sellers and vendors with the so-called "Dashboard for Compliance with Product Safety Guidelines (Compliance)".
If you have affected products in your product catalog, you can use this dashboard to submit required information for compliance with guidelines to Amazon. By uploading this information, Amazon offers you the opportunity to ensure that your products comply with legal guidelines and are safe for buyers.
The dashboard gives you an overview of which ASINs require additional documents. Amazon gives you a specific deadline for uploading the required documents. You should upload the requested information by the displayed deadline to avoid a possible temporary suspension of your offers on Amazon.
Sellers can access the Dashboard for Compliance with Product Safety Guidelines (Compliance) in Seller Central via the following link.
Vendors can access the dashboard in Vendor Central via the following link.
New Image Variant "Product Safety and Compliance"
If you carry products in your catalog that must be marked with markings, warnings and safety labels on the product packaging according to EU law (cf. help page), you must now upload all sides of the packaging together with warnings, markings and labels as a product image.
Examples of mandatory markings would be e.g. CE marking for electrical appliances or GHS hazard pictograms for chemicals.
Amazon has not yet published a time limit by which the product images of affected products must be updated. However, since Amazon reserves the right to remove offers where required information is missing on the product detail page, we would recommend that you update these immediately.
To be able to submit product images with product safety information to Amazon, a new image variant with the image type: "Product Safety and Compliance" was introduced in February 2023.
According to Amazon, the mentioned image variant can also be used by you to upload images of the product manual.
From now on, six new image variants are available in Seller and Vendor Central, on which all sides of the packaging can be uploaded.
If you want to manage images for existing products in your catalog, you can find the function in Seller and Vendor Central under: Catalog -> Upload Images -> Image Manager
If you want to update product images of several ASINs at the same time, you can alternatively also use the "Bulk Upload Images" function. How you can use Amazon's so-called "bulk upload", we explain to you in the following article: Update 20,000 images on Amazon in 4min32s.
However, note that Amazon reviews your uploaded images to ensure they meet the technical requirements for files and image content. Once your images have been processed and confirmed as compliant, they will be published on the product detail page. This process can take several days.
Amazon Introduces Dashboard for Responsible Person
In addition to the legal regulations mentioned at the beginning of the article, the EU Regulation on Market Surveillance and Product Safety Compliance has been in force since July 16, 2021.
This regulation requires products that are marked with a CE marking and are sold in the European Union to contain information about a responsible person or company for product compliance.
To make it easier to appoint responsible persons in the future, Amazon has introduced the so-called VP Dashboard at the beginning of this year.
In this dashboard, you have the opportunity to provide information about the responsible person for all products of your brands with CE marking that you offer in the EU.
What is the CE marking?
The letters CE stand for "Conformité Européenne", which means "European Conformity". Manufacturers are obliged to mark their products with the CE marking on their own responsibility. The CE marking indicates that a product complies with the safety, health and environmental protection standards of the European Economic Area (EEA). In addition, EU legislation requires manufacturers of products with CE marking to issue an EU declaration of conformity and create technical documentation for the product.
However, not all products offered in the European Economic Area must be marked with a CE marking. Example products that require a CE marking are: Medical equipment, electronic devices, toys, protective equipment, gas products, pressure vessels and measuring devices. A complete list of products subject to the CE marking requirement can be found on the European Commission website. Since selling products with CE marking in the EU without a responsible person is illegal, you should regularly check the dashboard and maintain your VP information. You can access the dashboard here.
While this change initially only affects sellers who carry products with CE marking in their product catalog, in the future this will affect all sellers in the EU.
So Amazon writes:
In the VP Dashboard, you can check which of your brands or ASINs with CE marking require a responsible person. Additional ASINs will be added once the General Product Safety Regulation has been adopted.
In another publication, Amazon also writes:
Newly added ASINs will be displayed with the deadline of September 30, 2024.
In this quote, Amazon refers to the General Product Safety Regulation (GPSR), which the EU Parliament and Council agreed on on December 21, 2022.
With the GPSR, another legal change will come into force that will result in a responsible person in the EU having to be appointed for all products offered in the European Union, not just for articles with CE marking.
All info about GPSR from December 13, 2024.
Amazon mentions about this:
You will likely need to provide information about the responsible person on the product, its packaging, the package or an accompanying document and possibly also on the product detail page for all products offered in the EU.
By adding the new image variants, Amazon is preparing for this legal change. The EU Parliament and Council must approve the agreement before it can be published in the EU Official Journal and come into force. Approval is expected around March 2023. The GPSR will apply 18 months after it comes into force, i.e. from around Q3 2024.
For products without CE marking, there is therefore no need for action before the GPSR comes into force in 2024.
Conclusion
As a preventive measure, you should ensure that you can appoint a responsible person from the EU in the new dashboard for each product you sell on EU marketplaces in the future. You should also deal with the necessary information on your product packaging early on and obtain any certifications and documents now. The implementation of such topics is usually quite time-consuming. This will also be the reason why Amazon sensitizes sellers and vendors to this topic area. Even if no concrete action is initially recognizable from the new adjustments at Amazon, you should closely observe the developments here.
With the introduction of these innovations, Amazon is trying to take the extensive topic area of product safety much more seriously in the future. In the past, Amazon has often been criticized for not doing enough about product authenticity and safety. Thanks to corresponding EU requirements, Amazon is now forced to act here. From a consumer perspective, this is certainly a welcome step that could ultimately stand for more transparency in the marketplace. To what extent and when Amazon will actually block products is currently still unclear. However, we will keep you updated on this.
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