Product Safety for Fashion Brands that Wish to Sell in the EU

Every product sold to EU consumers must be safe. That is not new. What changed in December 2024 is how the EU requires brands to prove it. The General Product Safety Regulation (the GPSR) replaced the previous Product Safety Directive (GPSD) with a significantly more detailed framework: clearer obligations, more specific documentation requirements, and new responsibilities that apply to anyone whose name appears on a product sold in the EU market.

This article focuses specifically on brands, i.e., the companies whose name, trademark, or logo is on the product. Under the GPSR, that makes you the manufacturer in legal terms, regardless of whether you own the factory. And it comes with a defined set of obligations that apply from the moment you first sell a product to an EU consumer.

The good news is that much of what the GPSR requires is a formalisation of good practice rather than a radical departure from the (GPSD)

If your name is on the label, EU law considers you the manufacturer, and the GPSR holds you responsible

You are the manufacturer, even if you don’t own the factory

The GPSR defines the manufacturer as the person who designs, produces, or has a product designed or produced and then markets it under their own name or trademark. In fashion and textiles, this almost always means the brand. If you brief a factory on what to make, attach your label to the finished product, and sell it to consumers under your brand name, you are the manufacturer for GPSR purposes.

This matters because the GPSR attaches specific obligations to the manufacturer: the design and safety assessment, the technical documentation, the traceability labelling, the post-sale monitoring, and the incident response. These are your responsibilities. An importer or an Authorised Representative may hold some of them on your behalf in the EU market, but the underlying accountability traces back to the brand. 

There is one further scenario worth flagging: if someone other than the original manufacturer substantially modifies a product, for example, adding new components, or altering it in a way that affects its safety characteristics, that person takes on manufacturer obligations for the modified product. For brands that work with upcycling this is worth keeping in mind.

The Responsible Person: the requirement that matters most for non-EU brands

The GPSR introduced a new prerequisite for any non-EU manufacturer placing products on the EU market: there must be a Responsible Person legally established in the EU. This is the single most important practical requirement for brands based outside the EU.

The Responsible Person is the legal point of contact in the EU, the entity that authorities can reach when they have questions about product compliance, and the party responsible for ensuring that technical documentation is maintained and available. Without a Responsible Person in place, your products cannot legally be placed on the EU market.

There are two ways to meet this requirement. The first is to sell through an EU-based importer. When an importer places your products on the EU market, they automatically take on the Responsible Person obligations. The second is to appoint an Authorised Representative: an EU-established entity that you formally mandate to act on your behalf for compliance purposes. This is required if you sell directly to EU retailers or consumers without going through an importer.

Your Responsible Person must be identified on the product: their name, postal address, and electronic contact details must appear on the product itself, or on its packaging or accompanying documentation if the product is too small to carry it directly. This is not optional, and it is not satisfied by providing only your own non-EU contact details.

Safety assessment: what you need to assess and document

The core obligation under the GPSR is straightforward: your products must be safe for their intended use. What has changed with the GPSR is the level of formality required in assessing and documenting that safety, and the range of factors that must now be considered.

The GPSR provides an expanded list of factors that feed into whether a product is safe. For fashion and textile brands, the most directly relevant are the physical characteristics of the product: its materials, construction, and finishing; the presence of components that could detach, break, or cause injury; the way the product is intended to be used and any foreseeable misuse; and the categories of consumer likely to use the product, with heightened attention to products that could be used by or appeal to children, older people, or people with disabilities.

Technical documentation: what you must maintain

Every product you place on the EU market must be supported by a technical documentation file. This is not a form to submit but it is an internal record that you must retain for at least 10 years after the product is first placed on the EU market. You must submit it to market surveillance authorities if requested. The regulation specifies that technical documentation must include at a minimum:

• A general description of the product
• The key characteristics relevant to safety i.e., materials, construction, dimensions, components
• An analysis of potential risks and how they were identified and addressed
• A list of any EU harmonised safety standards applied in assessing the product

In practice, it is also recommended to include test reports from accredited laboratories (particularly for REACH chemical compliance, EN safety standards for childrenswear, or flammability standards), any relevant conformity declarations, quality control records from production, and supplier material certificates.

You must keep technical documentation up to date so if a product is modified, the documentation must reflect it.

Traceability and identification

The GPSR introduces specific traceability requirements that apply directly to what appears on your product and its packaging. They must be met for every product placed on the EU market.

Every product must carry, on the product itself where possible (or on its packaging or accompanying documentation where not):

• Your brand name, registered trade name, or trademark
• Your postal address
• Your electronic contact address i.e. email address or website page with contact form 
• A product identification element: a batch number, type number, or serial number

The purpose of the batch or serial number is to enable rapid identification and targeted recall if a safety issue arises. It does not need to be a sophisticated system, a SKU or a production batch reference is sufficient but it must be present and it must allow you to identify which specific products are affected if a problem is reported.

If you are a non-EU brand selling through an EU importer, the importer's name and contact details must also appear on the product, packaging, or accompanying documents. 

A qualified advisor can assist you on the information that should exist on the labels and packaging.

Online sales: the rules apply just as strictly

The GPSR makes no distinction between products sold in physical stores and products sold online. The same safety, documentation, and traceability requirements apply regardless of the channel. For brands selling direct-to-consumer through their own website, particularly common for non-EU brands entering European markets, this has some specific implications.

This applies to every product listing, and the information must be current. If your Responsible Person changes, or your contact details change, the product page must be updated.

Instructions, warnings, and safety information

The GPSR requires that consumers receive clear instructions and safety information in a language they can easily understand.It is important to stress that not every product requires written safety instructions. If a product can be used safely and as intended without them, no instructions are required. The assessment of whether instructions are necessary is part of the safety assessment process. 

For products that do require safety instructions these must be in the local language, legible, and accessible to consumers before and after purchase. Practically, this means that the label should include the official language of the member state where the product is sold. 

The GPSR also requires you to maintain publicly accessible communication channels for consumers such as a phone number, email address, or web form where consumers can report safety issues or accidents they have experienced.

When something goes wrong: your post-sale obligations

The GPSR strengthens the obligations that apply after a product has been placed on the market. The underlying principle is that your responsibility for a product's safety does not end at the point of sale but it continues for as long as that product is in use by consumers.

Monitoring and complaints

You are required to monitor the safety of products you place on the EU market on an ongoing basis. In practice, this means having a system for receiving and investigating consumer complaints and reports of accidents. You must keep an internal register of complaints and document what was reported, how it was investigated, and what action was taken. 

You should also regularly monitor the EU Safety Gate portal which is the system used by EU market surveillance authorities to circulate alerts about dangerous products. If a product in a category relevant to yours appears on the Safety Gate, it is worth reviewing whether any similar risk could apply to your own products.

Corrective action and recalls

If you identify that a product you have placed on the EU market is dangerous, you are required to act immediately. The GPSR sets out a clear sequence: inform the manufacturer and any other relevant economic operators in your supply chain; take whatever corrective measures are necessary, which may mean withdrawing unsold stock, issuing a recall of products already with consumers, or arranging for repair and inform consumers clearly about the risk and what they should do. You also must notify the relevant national market surveillance authorities through the EU Safety Business Gateway.

Key sources and further reading

The following are authoritative and publicly accessible:

• Regulation (EU) 2023/988 (GPSR): full text eur-lex.europa.eu 
• EU Safety Gate product safety alerts portal: ec.europa.eu/safety-gate 
• Safety Business Gateway for notifying authorities of dangerous products: webgate.ec.europa.eu/safety-business-gateway 
• Bergstrand’s free EU Compliance Guide