How to Verify if a Product is Safe and Compliant

August 07, 2023
Table of Contents

Planning to get a new custom-designed Bluetooth speaker manufactured or found something interesting at the Canton Fair last year? Regardless of whether you plan to import custom-designed or factory designed products, ensuring compliance is a critical part of the process.

However, that process can like quite different, depending on whether you buy a custom-designed product or factory designed product. That’s also what I will explain in this article.

This is covered:

  • Product design and compliance
  • Lab testing
  • Labeling checks
  • Product certificates and documentation checks

But, first, let’s go through the basics:

Product safety

Ensuring compliance with mandatory or voluntary standards starts at the design stage. However, third-party lab testing is often required to verify compliance. As I will explain in this article, safety testing can take place at various stages of the product cycle.

Here are some examples of relevant product standards:

  • ASTM F963
  • EN 71-3
  • IEC 62281

Importing and selling unsafe and non-compliant products can result in forced recalls and major fines.

Product labeling

Compliance marks and other labeling are often mandatory when importing and selling products. Examples include the CE mark in the European Union and the country of origin (e.g. Made in Vietnam) in the United States. Note that labeling requirements can apply to both the product and the packaging.

Here are some label examples:

  • CE mark: European Union
  • Knife and fork mark: European Union
  • Textiles labeling
  • FCC mark: United States
  • Country of origin: United States
  • Bag suffocation warning label: United States
  • CPSIA tracking label: United States

Certification/Documentation

Product certification and documentation are mandatory for various products sold in the United States, the European Union and elsewhere. Here are a few examples:

  • Declaration of Conformity (DoC)
  • Technical file
  • User manual
  • Children’s Product Certificate (CPC)
  • General Certificate of Conformity (GCC)

Custom Designed (OEM) Products

Planning to get a brand new OEM product manufactured? If so, you’ll need to take product compliance into consideration at an early stage.

a. Product Design & Lab testing

Ensuring compliance with safety standards requires implementation at a design stage. For example, designing a phone charger in compliance with EU electrical safety regulations depends largely on the selected components and PCB designs.

Likewise, ensuring that a soft toy is compliant with ASTM F-963 requires that you reinforce the design to prevent hazardous lose parts.

In other words, product compliance doesn’t happen by accident.

Still, in the end you’ll need a third-party testing company to help you verify if the product is compliant. Keep in mind that third-party testing is often mandatory, even if you know for a fact that your product is compliant.

Further, lab testing can either be done before mass production or after. In the electronics industry, for example, prototype compliance testing is common. This is also the case for children’s products.

b. Label check

When manufacturing custom-designed products, it’s up to you to ensure that your product gets correctly labeled. In other words, you get what you specify. It’s therefore critical to confirm all mandatory labeling requirements and create label files - for both the product and the packaging.

c. Create Certificates/Documents

Don’t expect your manufacturer to help with product certificates, technical files, and user manuals. This is managed entirely by you as a buyer when it comes to custom-designed products.

Factory Designed (ODM) Products

Planning to import and sell a factory designed p

a. Lab testing

When buying factory designed products, you normally don’t have access to design drawings and technical specifications to help you assess if the product is ‘designed for compliance’. As such, third-party lab testing is often the only option.

Well, there is another way. Some suppliers may have existing lab test reports, but that is rarely the case. Further, some regulations (e.g. Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act: CPSIA) require that test reports are valid for the exact same products you import and. Sell.

This means that using existing lab test reports is rarely an option, even though it seems like an effective way to save on lab testing charges.

b. Label check

Compliance marks and other mandatory labels must be inspected before shipment. It’s therefore important to book pre-shipment inspections that also include a product and packaging label check.

Keep in mind that many private label products are not correctly labeled from the start. You may, therefore, need to provide complementary label documentation and files to your supplier before production.

Do not assume that they know how to label your product in your country, even if they know where the product will be sold.

c. Certificates/Documents Check

Either your supplier can provide all mandatory product certificates and other documents (e.g. Declaration of Conformity or user manual) or they cannot. Most likely, the answer is no, and you’ll need to create all ‘missing documents’ yourself.

That said, you must know exactly which documents you need before you can confirm if a supplier can or cannot provide the necessary documents.

A common mistake I see is that buyers often request a test report or certificate, and accept any document the supplier can provide at face value. This can be a very costly mistake.

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