GPSR in an online store comes down to one thing: the offer for every product covered by the regulation must show clear and visible manufacturer details, details of the responsible person in the EU, information identifying the product, and warnings and safety information. The new rules apply from 13 December 2024, which is a week from now, as confirmed by the government overview of general product safety. Time is short. So below you get a checklist of fields, tips on where to get the missing data and where to store it in your store, and a way to fill in product pages in bulk. This text describes the situation as of December 2024 and is not a substitute for legal advice.
Table of contents
What is the General Product Safety Regulation and who does it apply to?
Regulation (EU) 2023/988, GPSR for short, defines from 13 December 2024 the general safety requirements for products that have no specific rules of their own. It covers new, used, repaired and reconditioned goods. Made in the EU or imported from third countries, it makes no difference. Out of scope are, among others, medicinal products, plant protection products and animal by-products. And supervision? The President of UOKiK, the Polish Office of Competition and Consumer Protection.
An online seller is usually a distributor, meaning an entity that makes available goods produced by someone else. But things change when you bring in stock from outside the EU or sell it under your own brand: then you take on more obligations, closer to the role of an importer or manufacturer. So right at the start, work out which role you play for each product group. Separately for each one, because a single store can have several.
What must a product page contain from 13 December 2024?
A distance selling offer must contain at least clear and visible information about the manufacturer, the responsible person, the identification of the product and its safety. This scope is set out by biznes.gov.pl in its section on online sales. In practice, a product page needs four groups of data:
- manufacturer details - name plus the postal and electronic address where it can be contacted,
- details of the responsible person in the EU - name and contact details, when the manufacturer is based outside the EU,
- product identification - a photo, the type and other identifiers that make it possible to recognise the specific item,
- warnings and safety information - in a language the consumer can understand.
And what about old stock? Products placed on the market before 13 December 2024 that comply with the previous rules can, as a general rule, stay on sale. Check the details in UOKiK announcements, though.
Where do you get manufacturer details for a product page?
From the manufacturer, obviously. Except that in practice they reach the store through a wholesaler or your own ERP system. Start with your suppliers’ product files in CSV or XML format, because some wholesalers have already added the relevant columns to them. Not there? Send a request to fill in specific fields, and as a fallback source use the label and packaging, where the manufacturer gives its name and address.
In my opinion, the most convenient approach is to save this information in the ERP once, at brand or supplier level, not for every SKU. The store then pulls it from a single source of truth, and well-planned systems integration in e-commerce makes sure that a change of the manufacturer’s address reaches all product pages at once. And then there is the stock the supplier stays silent about. Keep a list of gaps for it and fill them in the order set by sales.
Where to keep GPSR information in an online store: attributes or custom fields?
In short: keep data that repeats across a brand in an attribute or taxonomy, and product-specific content in custom fields. In a GPSR WooCommerce setup, the manufacturer and the responsible person fit a global attribute or a brand taxonomy, because a single entry then serves hundreds of items. Warnings are a different story. They vary from product to product, so it is better to put them in a custom field assigned to the product.
But the structure alone achieves nothing if the customer does not see this information. It has to be visible in the offer, for example in a separate tab or block on the product page. Not in a downloadable file. Not in the terms and conditions. If you are only just planning your data architecture, include these fields at the stage described in the guide to setting up a store step by step.
How do you fill in product pages in bulk in a week?
The fastest way is a CSV import: you assign manufacturer details at brand level and warnings at category or product level. The order of work looks like this:
- Export your whole product range with identifiers and brand.
- Group the items by manufacturer.
- Prepare a table: manufacturer - address - email - responsible person.
- Import it into attributes or the brand taxonomy.
- Add a block that displays the new fields to the product page template.
- Run a spot check and update the list of gaps.
Copy the warnings on the product page from the manufacturer’s label or instructions. No wording of your own. During the check, also verify that every item has a photo and identifiers such as model, EAN or batch number. Oh, and when descriptions are created in an external system, a WooCommerce integration with BaseLinker lets you synchronise these fields across channels (though the seller is still responsible for their content).
What is worth putting in order beyond the product page?
The product page is not everything. A distributor also takes part in monitoring product safety, so it needs a procedure for reports and for recovering goods. Information about the risk to consumers’ health, the number of products it affects and the corrective measures taken is passed to UOKiK through the Safety Business Gateway. So decide who in the company receives signals from customers and where batches and suppliers are recorded. Because if something happens, you need to be able to quickly point to who bought a given item. This is, by the way, one piece of a broader topic: consumer rights in online stores.
Offers on marketplaces require the same data, so it pays to keep it in a single source and send it out from there to all channels. Are you implementing GPSR in your online store this week? Start with three things: a table of manufacturers and responsible persons for your best-selling brands, a block on the product page that shows this information, and a list of gaps sent to suppliers. Fill in the rest of the range in batches, by turnover.
Frequently asked questions
Does GPSR also apply to used products?
Yes. The regulation covers new, used, repaired and reconditioned products, so a store with second-hand or refurbished goods should prepare its product pages in the same way as a seller of new stock. The exceptions are categories excluded from the rules, for example medicinal products.
What do you enter when the manufacturer is based outside the European Union?
In that case the product page shows the manufacturer details and the details of the responsible person in the EU, meaning an entity based in the EU that can be contacted about the safety of the goods. Ask your supplier or importer for its name and address. Do not have this information? The item should go on the list of gaps.
Can manufacturer details be given only in the store’s terms and conditions?
No. The information has to be clear and visible in the offer for the specific product. The terms and conditions or a downloadable file can repeat it, but they will not replace the block on the product page. The simplest way is to display it in a separate tab next to the description.
