Tomorrow is a dark day for small businesses in the UK

[lostmybuttons]

I run a small business, mostly selling on Etsy. But as of tomorrow, Friday 13th December the introduction of the new GPSR legislation is creating such a huge headache for businesses like mine.

We can no longer sell to the EU or Northern Ireland, without paying for an appointed representative to ensure our products are safe. The cost for this is completely unachievable for most businesses like mine. Obviously, we all want our products to be as safe as possible but is it right that it'll cost me at least £2,000 a year to tell me my paper stationery is safe!!

Our only choice is to stop selling to the EU and Northern Ireland, which is a huge loss in income for those already struggling.

We feel like we are shouting into the void and absolutely no one is listening.

This is compounded by the fact that Etsy refuse to separate Northern Ireland in our shipping settings, so by default we are all breaking the legislation and risking fine of up to £20,000.

All Etsy have advised is to cancel any NI orders, which frankly is terrible customer service.

If there was ever a time to shop independent, your small business friends need you now.

When I had to pay for something connected to HMRC I found a list of approved suppliers on their site and felt better about that, knowing they'd accept the service

There needs to be instruction, guidance and similar for services

Thank you.
This is exactly the problem I have with new old stock car spares.

The original manufacturers no longer exist.

No safety documentation (why would there be), no possibility of an EU rep,

no 'batch' information on production.

I saw this yesterday for a seller I buy jumpers from, it's ridiculous.

Sympathies OP, I know things are already hard for small businesses.

I am not missing the point. I am not making this a Brexit leave or remain argument I am talking about dealing with what is now not what should or could be and not what is or isn't right. Just talking about what is.

I am talking about how we have to comply with laws and it was ever thus. And how whatever the laws are, whoever makes them we have to comply. That these things are part and parcel of running a business.

Whatever trade deals we have with other counties, whatever markets we subscribe to it is no different.

That we have no say is pretty much the description of all trade deals with other markets anyway. Compromises are made or conditions set that has always been the case.

Can you see NI returning back to Ireland and becoming one whole country again. It would make more economic sense if they did that. Everything that is happening does not affect the rich Tories. I remember reading Jacob Rees-Mogg moved his company to Dublin. Nigel Farage has his European passport. it's only us Noddy's that don't have fuck all voting ourselves poorer because people felt they had importance until reality hit. Starmer is very reluctant to bring us back to Europe he's doing trade deals with the rest of the world and they are not our neighbours.

Northern Ireland IS a part of the UK.

This is the attitude that is setting us back making us poorer. It costs more money to run a business now than what it did before we left Europe. More businesses will have to close. I would like someone to tell me how we have progressed and become better off since Brexit?

Blue passports?? That's about it isn't it?!

Changing geo-filtering could be a fix I suppose - I don't know if that would be easier. It depends on whether their current geographical filtering works on both seller and customer side - i.e. prevents a customer detected as being NI based from ordering from sellers based in certain locations. I can't think why they would have that functionality built though.

That would mean that the seller doesn't get the choice on whether they allow sales to NI or not (and wouldn't work for any customer using a VPN). It would be a very drastic approach and seems disproportionate to the risk compared to the approach of telling sellers that they should cancel customer orders from NI if they can't comply with GPSR and assuming that in reality the regulators won't go against small businesses who are listing but not fulfilling (seems very unlikely there would be focus on this area soon, but that's easy for me to say because I'm not in OP's position where I am risking being fined!).

Logically, if it were a trivial change etsy would simply do it. The fact they haven't made the change means that it's non-trivial or they genuinely didn't know until eg yesterday that GPSR was coming (pretty unbelievable - some small businesses may have missed this but the larger players have been shouting a lot!).

None of this helps OP of course - it's pretty shit for her.

I don't think you do get the point. OP does have to ensure her products are compliant. It seems clear that she is confident that they are compliant. The issue is she now has to pay a third party to formally take on an 'authorised representative' role to see in Northern Ireland, which is part of the UK, and that third party needs to be sure the products are compliant. So OP now has to pay to prove her products are compliant for a sale within her own country - this isn't international trade: it's a sale by a UK business to a UK customer. This is only considered a cross border sale because of Brexit.

This is requirement new and it's a significant burden on small businesses selling low risk products.

Food safety standards, maybe. But the deal involves importing meat that has been produced with lower animal welfare standards than those that are imposed on UK farmers. Animal welfare (covering what happens to the animal before it's slaughtered) is a whole different set of rules to food standards.

Both animal welfare and the success of British farmers are things that people in the UK overwhelmingly claim to care a lot about in polls, but, y'know, cheap beef.

I'm frustrated by this! I live in NI!

NI will never merge with the Republic. If that ever happened, the Troubles would occur in reverse, with the targets being the Republic's government/Dublin etc....

I have had a company recommended to me to help navigate this. I have requested a free 30 minute call with them. I will report back if it is any good. I sell a lot to the EU and NI so could be in my financial interests to get it sorted.

As an aside, this is nothing to do with Brexit. Even if we were still in the EU, we would have to be jumping through all these hoops. The only difference is we wouldn't need an authorised representative, but labelling and testing of products would be so expensive it would see thousands and thousands of small businesses fold immediately.

There are rumours the UK will adopt something similar so be prepared folks.

I had to stop selling to the EU when that packaging tax thing came into place. Tbh I don’t really miss it. The US is by far the best market in the world for me. I sell vintage.

Switch to Folksy.com
They've worked really hard working out how to handle this, and have reformatted postage to separate NI from UK.

I sell through them and the team are really with us sellers on this.

It's 2k fir every single country, I believe.

2k for NI.
2k for Germany
2k for France.
2k for Italy.

That sound affordable to you now?

Very sorry to hear this. Could you sell your business to a business operating within the single market? At least stock won't get scrapped.

(There is a win here for EU countries - businesses are more likely now to set up on their territory.)

And now the businesses have to pay £2k per EU country to have an "appointed person" verify that the goods are safe. They would not have to do this if they were in the EU.

There’s a lot of nuance to the agreements. I would argue there was a compromise and we did well. I don’t believe the animal welfare standards differ to such a large extent it leads to harm in the British food chain through exported animal products as the UK’s high standards are still adhered to. The primary outcome of ensuring safety for British consumers was met IMO.

I know the NFU, RSPCA et al. have differing views but it is a good deal with positive outcomes for consumers.

I get it
Its a simple mistake
Like people calling Africa a country 🤯

Wow this is incredulous! I sell PDF knitting patterns.

Is it 2k per annum or forever or per sale? So if my pattern went viral and to sell to all 27 EU countries and NI - I would need to shell out 56K!!!

If we had remained in the EU, we would still jump hoops but pay 2k only.

Sod that! So anyone selling to the EU from outside, all over the world, cannot get their goods in without paying these extortion amounts! I would need to sell a lot of patterns to get 2k back, let alone 56k back.

Bye bye EU customers, they have gone under an iron dome.

Small businesses?
Let me give you (probably a common) example.
Some time ago, I had a choice to purchase an item from either a small business or a big cooperation.
Not only the item was more expensive in the small company, they "no longer provide or initiate free returns".
I know my choice from now on, popular or not.
As my husband says, customers vote with their feet.

Yup.

Except the UK does not have freedom from EU regulations, as this thread clearly demonstrates. Businesses will still have to comply with EU regulations if they want to sell within the EU.

By "freedom from EU regulations", I meant that the UK Govt isn't under a treaty obligation to adopt all the regs from the EU. As you rightly say, the facts on the ground are that British companies looking to export will have to be familiar with, and meet, EU regs. As UK regs and EU regs diverge over time, British businesses exporting to the EU will need to be familiar with and comply with two sets of regulations, potentially needing two variants of a product if the regs conflict. Ever bought something with one of these on it? (Travel adapters being the most common items I've seen with these label.) These labels are used when a manufacturer makes separate product variants to cope with differing regulatory requirements. Apply one to the domestic variant by mistake, €20k fine.

It’s per product line, and there are consolidated EU-wide responsible persons who will cover all of the EU for one fee. But again its per product line, so yes well out of the reach of many.