The compliance questions indie sellers ask first.

Frequently asked

Ten compliance questions, answered in plain English.

Short sentences, no legalese. Each answer is written for an indie seller — not their lawyer — and sized to read in under a minute. Click a question to expand.

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• Do I need a Prop 65 warning if I never ship to California?+

  Probably yes. California's Proposition 65 is a per-buyer regime, not a per-warehouse one — if a single California resident places an order through your Etsy, Shopify, or Amazon listing, the warning obligation kicks in on that order. The old workaround of turning off California shipping does not protect you when buyers use a forwarding address or a marketplace reroutes the parcel. The safe move is to add the short-form warning on the listing itself for any wood-combustion, food-contact, metal-jewelry, or otherwise listed-chemical SKU, before a complaint arrives.
• EU GPSR: what every listing needs, and what the December 2024 deadline changed.+

  Since December 2024 the EU General Product Safety Regulation expects every consumer product listing shipped into the EU to carry three pieces of information: a manufacturer or brand name with a postal address, a separate EU Responsible Person contact, and the basic product safety information for the SKU. Etsy, Shopify, and Amazon do not produce this paperwork for you — it has to live on the product page itself. If the parcel enters the EU without those three blocks, marketplaces start hiding listings from EU search and EU customs start holding the parcel at the border.
• Country-of-origin claims: when a "Made in X" line gets you in trouble.+

  A regional-origin phrase in a listing title is treated as a factual claim — not marketing color — by Amazon merchant policy, Etsy handmade rules, and Shopify store policies. Two specific patterns trip enforcement: 'Made in Vermont' paired with a ships-from address in a different state, and 'Handmade in Tuscany' on a SKU that was assembled from a kit. Both are the kind of facts a buyer can escalate, and once escalated the listing is paused before you get a chance to edit. The clean fix is to keep the origin phrase tight to where the work actually happened, or drop it.
• Amazon FBA hazmat review: what triggers it and how to pass.+

  Amazon's dangerous-goods review flags any product that contains a battery, a flammable liquid, an aerosol, a magnet above a certain size, or a powder — regardless of how small the quantity. The review usually arrives as 'provide an SDS within 7 days or the listing is paused.' Passing the review means uploading the Safety Data Sheet for the actual formulation, the UN number where applicable, and the battery-test summary if it is a lithium cell. The biggest cause of failure is submitting a generic SDS that does not match the SKU on file.
• Trademark infringement risk on a marketplace listing: the line between inspiration and copy.+

  Brand-owners scan marketplace listings daily through automated trademark tools. Two phrases put a listing on the wrong side of the line: a registered brand name in the title that is not your own brand, and a logo image that is a near-match to a registered mark — even with the colors inverted or the orientation flipped. Inspiration is fine; using someone else's mark to surface in their search is infringement. The reliable line is: if removing the phrase would change who finds the listing, the phrase is doing trademark work.
• Amazon restricted products: the categories that hide the longest lists.+

  Three categories publish the longest restricted-products lists and the slowest approval times: health and personal care, dietary supplements, and toys / children-products. Each requires pre-approval with documents (formula disclosure, lab tests, age-grading documentation) before a single unit can be listed. A common indie-seller mistake is launching in one of these categories without realizing the listing is gated — Amazon will hold the inventory in the FBA warehouse without making it buyable until approval clears.
• Counterfeit claims: what to do the day you get the email.+

  Counterfeit notices on Amazon, Etsy, and Shopify all share a structure: a brand owner asserts their registered mark, names your SKU, and asks for removal. The right first move is to respond inside the platform, not by email — counterclaims live inside the brand-Registry workflow. Three things matter in the response: an explanation of where you sourced the input materials, photographs of the work in progress, and a clear statement on whether the listing copy contained the brand name. From receipt to first response the typical clock is 7 to 14 days.
• Etsy Handmade policy: how Etsy actually decides, and what "all handmade" really means.+

  Etsy's Handmade rule is enforced through buyer escalation and through Etsy's periodic Handmade-category reviews. Two listing patterns trip it fastest: a 'handmade' tag on a SKU that was assembled from a production kit, and a 'vintage' tag on any item older than 20 years that is not actually vintage. Etsy decides on the listing copy plus the photo evidence, not on your shop history — so the fix is in the listing itself (clear sourcing language, a production-process photo, and a tag set that matches the work).
• New EU trademark registration: what just changed for cross-border sellers.+

  The EUIPO unitary trademark and the post-Brexit UKIPO split still matter for cross-border sellers because the same brand name can be registered in one jurisdiction and not another. Two practical effects: a brand owner with only an EU registration cannot enforce against a UK listing by default, and a brand owner with only a US registration cannot enforce against an EU listing at all. For a multi-channel indie seller this means trademark conflicts on listings can vary by storefront, even when the title copy is identical across all three.
• Quick start: where to put warnings before a complaint arrives.+

  Three places to put warnings before a complaint lands, in order of leverage. First, the listing description on every prop-65-relevant SKU, using the California short-form warning text. Second, the GPSR product-safety block on every EU-bound listing, with the manufacturer address and the EU Responsible Person both present. Third, the platform-mandated disclosures at the bottom of any listing that carries affiliate, sponsored, or material-connection copy. Putting the warnings in those three places handles the majority of indie-seller enforcement before it ever arrives.