How the new GPSR guidelines will affect us & our EU/NI customers

Today we’re bringing pretty unfortunate news for our EU & NI customers. 

You may have seen mumblings online within the small business community about new guidelines coming into force next month.

General Product Safety Regulations (GPSR) are taking effect on 13th December. This has been in the pipeline for years (apparently – all due to Brexit 🙄) but no-one thought to mention it to small businesses, who are going to be massively impacted by the new rules and are only now finding out about it.

The short story is: from 13th December we will no longer be able to sell to countries within the European Union, and Northern Ireland.

The long story is: these new GPSR regulations are replacing older safety regs and are being put in place to ensure that all sales placed in the EU meet modern safety standards.

This is all fair enough (of course we all want our products to be safe), and there are a number of things we would need to put in place on our products – such as updated safety information and compliance on labels which we can of course implement if that was the only condition.

The main issue however, is that all businesses selling products (‘Product’ means any item intended for consumers or likely to be used by consumers, whether in return for payment or free of charge), must have an Authorised Representative based in the EU/NI who acts as a compliance contact and ensures the products meet EU requirements.

We don’t have the resources to fulfil this requirement, and the fines that we will be liable to if we break this law are enormous. Which means that we (alongside every other UK small business that we know of) are no longer able to sell to our wonderful EU/NI customers.

This also applies to digital products too.

What does this mean for LAD?

We are devastated. We have come to know our european customers well, and we are so sad we will no longer be able to provide you with LAD products. 

We will be changing our delivery settings on the website to mean that EU/NI won’t be able to place an order. If for any reason one comes through we will have to refund and cancel the order. This will also be the case on our Etsy shop, although as a marketplace specifically supporting small businesses, we are hoping they put conditions in place to support their sellers – in which case we’ll direct EU customers there.

We will no longer be taking orders from 5th December, so if you would like to order before then, please do.

We’re so very sorry. We didn’t vote for Brexit, we loved being part of the European Union and we will be writing to our MP to request the government try to support small businesses because they are a incredible life force in this country.

We are desperately hoping there will be a change of terms and conditions with these new regulations and we will of course let you know of any updates as soon as we have them.

What does this mean for you, our EU/NI customers?

You have until 5th December to place an order with us, and after that I’m afraid we will no longer be despatching.

If you have any friends or family in the UK, please ask them to order through us so we can post orders to them for you to collect when you next see them – or they can send gift parcels to you (I’m not even sure this is allowed but I’m not sure why not 🫣😅)

If you’re ever visiting the UK, come see us in the shop and we can stock you up with all your LAD yarn!

What does this mean if you’re another small business?

If you’re like us, and you’re a small business based in the UK, you are liable to the same regulations. You are no longer legally able to sell any products – physical or digital – to the EU or NI without compliance in place.

It’s all very blurry and as I said earlier there is an absolute lack of information out there for us, but I do recommend reading this article from Folksy, who have laid it all out very clearly.

I’m so sorry that this is the case. We are completely gutted. 

Sending love and solidarity to all, and keeping everything crossed for a u-turn on this new ruling…

Helen x