Last year a friend of mine who runs a small home decor store on WooCommerce got a letter from a German customer. Not a complaint about the product – the candle holder was fine. The complaint was that the product page didn’t show who made it, where it was made, or who to contact if something went wrong. The customer had actually reported the store to the BNetzA.
My friend had never heard of GPSR. Most WooCommerce store owners haven’t. But that doesn’t matter to EU regulators.
GPSR (EU 2023/988) has been mandatory since December 13, 2024. Every physical product sold to EU consumers must display manufacturer identification, safety data, and traceability information. This applies regardless of where you or your business is based.
So what exactly is GPSR?
The General Product Safety Regulation (EU 2023/988) replaced the old General Product Safety Directive from 2001. The old directive was written before online shopping existed in any real way, so it had massive gaps when it came to e-commerce. GPSR closes those gaps.
In plain English: if you sell a physical product to someone in the EU, your product page needs to show specific safety and manufacturer information. Not buried in a PDF. Not available on request. Visible on the page, before purchase.
Who does this actually affect?
More people than you’d think.
- EU-based WooCommerce stores – yes, even if your manufacturer is also in the EU
- Non-EU sellers shipping to EU customers – UK stores, US stores, stores anywhere
- Dropshippers – you’re the seller of record, GPSR falls on you
- Marketplace sellers – Amazon and Etsy already enforce this, your WooCommerce store should too
- B2B stores selling to EU businesses – if the end product reaches consumers, GPSR applies
The common misconception is “I’m a small store, nobody will notice.” The thing is, EU consumers file complaints. German and Dutch consumers especially. And one complaint triggers an investigation. We’ve seen it happen to stores doing under 100 orders a month.
What data goes on each product page?
- Manufacturer name – full legal name of whoever made the product
- Manufacturer address – postal address, not just a country
- Manufacturer contact – email and/or phone number
- EU Responsible Person – if manufacturer is outside the EU, you need someone inside the EU listed with their contact details
- Product identifiers – EAN, UPC, GTIN, model number, or batch code for traceability
- Safety warnings – any hazards or age restrictions visible before purchase
- Country of origin – where the product was manufactured
That’s seven data points per product. If you have 500 products, that’s 3,500 fields to fill in. Manually. Which brings us to the real problem.
Not sure where you stand? Our free GPSR audit tool scans your store and tells you exactly what’s missing. Takes about 30 seconds.
The real problem isn’t the regulation – it’s the scale
We talk to store owners every week who understand GPSR just fine. They know what data is required. They know the deadline passed. The problem is they have 200 or 2,000 or 20,000 products and the idea of editing each one manually makes them want to close the laptop and go for a walk.
That’s why we built the GPSR Compliance plugin. Not because the regulation is hard to understand, but because doing it by hand at scale is miserable.
How the plugin handles it
- Create manufacturer records once – add your company (or supplier) details with all required fields
- Set a default – new products get the manufacturer automatically
- Bulk edit existing products – select all, apply manufacturer, done. Handles 100k+ products in batches
- Frontend display – GPSR data shows on product pages as a tab or below Add to Cart
- Schema.org – structured data generated automatically for Google
Most stores are fully compliant within 15 minutes. Even stores with 10,000+ products. The bulk edit wizard processes products in chunks with a progress bar, and you can undo everything with one click if something goes wrong.
What happens if you ignore this?
We wrote a whole article about the consequences, but the short version: fines up to 100,000 EUR (Germany), product removal from marketplaces (Amazon already does this), customs seizures (especially for dropshippers), and customer complaints that trigger investigations.
The regulation isn’t going away. Enforcement is getting stricter, not looser. Every month we hear about more stores getting hit.
14-day money-back guarantee. Works with WooCommerce 7.0+.
Stay compliant out there,
The WPCODER Team
Related articles
- GPSR compliance checklist
- What happens if you’re not compliant
- Free GPSR compliance checker
- EU Responsible Person guide
