GPSR on Allegro and Kaufland
GPSR in brief
From 13 December 2024, the EU General Product Safety Regulation takes effect, which applies to most consumer products (more here 6). Online marketplaces including Kaufland and Allegro require additional information from sellers. If not provided, the marketplaces reserve the right to hide the seller’s offer. For Allegro, it is necessary to fill in instructions and safety information and manufacturer’s data/data about the person responsible for placing the product on the European market. For Kaufland, these are the elements: name of the manufacturer/responsible person in the EU, CE marking, and safety instructions. In the article, you will learn how to add this information to your products on online marketplaces.
What is GPSR?
You may have already noticed that the EU General Product Safety Regulation (GPSR) will come into force on 13 December 2024. It introduces changes for sellers. The GPSR covers most consumer products, including new, used, repaired, and refurbished products and spare parts. The following are excluded from the Regulation:
- medicinal products intended for humans or animals
- food
- feed
- live plants and animals, genetically modified organisms, and genetically modified micro-organisms in contained conditions, such as products of plants and animals directly related to their future reproduction
- animal by-products and derived products
- plant protection products
- equipment in which consumers are transported or travel, where this equipment is directly operated by a service provider in the context of a transport service provided to consumers
- aircraft referred to in Article 2(3)(a) d) Regulation (EU) 2018/1139
- antiques
To comply with the information obligation on product safety, at least the following information must be provided for each product covered by the Regulation:
a. name, registered trade name or registered trademark of the manufacturer, postal and e-mail address of the manufacturer
- Details of the person responsible for placing the product on the European market - to be provided only if the manufacturer’s registered office is located outside the European Union: name, postal, and e-mail address
b. information allowing the identification of the product, including its image, category, and other identifiers such as EAN code, model, etc.
c. warnings and safety information – providing information on how to use the product safely, for example:
- product user manual – add attachments in the official language of the country where you sell the product
- images of the labels on the product packaging
- a note with warnings related to the product
d. if required, CE marking and documents of conformity
More information about the GPSR can be found here: General Product Safety Regulation (2023) | EUR-Lex
How to add information to your products on online marketplaces?
Allegro
With Allegro, you need to pay attention to three pieces of information that are to be filled in at the offer level:
- manufacturer details
- details of the person responsible for placing the product on the European market
- instructions and safety information
1. Details of the manufacturer and of the person responsible for placing the product on the European market
You can add manufacturer data in the “Manufacturer Data” section under the “Sales Settings” tab directly in the Allegra Sales Center. You only need to enter the details of the person responsible for marketing the product in Europe if the manufacturer is located outside the European Union. You can add the information in the “Responsible persons” section of the “Sales setup” tab directly in the Allegra Sales Center.
This way, you can prepare all the cards of the manufacturers and responsible persons on Allegro in advance:
- name and surname, registered trade name or registered trade mark
- the address
- an e-mail address and - optionally - a contact number.
You also enter a “Custom Name” for each manufacturer/person - pay attention to this information, as you will use this name to associate the manufacturer and responsible person to the offers in Mergado Marketplaces.
Once you have all the manufacturers and responsible persons in the Allegro Sales Center ready, you can go to the Mergado Marketplaces application. You can then add this data in the campaign settings in Mergado Marketplaces, where you have the option to choose a single manufacturer for all products in the campaign or pair the element to the feed. In the case of pairing to an element from the feed, enter the custom names of the sellers as values, as you filled them in the Allegro administration.
You can add the names of manufacturers and responsible persons to the feed in 2 ways:
1. Create a new element and add a value using selections
Go to the “Elements” section of the project you are using in Mergado Marketplaces. Then click “Add new element”:
The name is entirely up to you, for our purposes, we chose the name RESPONSIBLE_PRODUCER for the manufacturer information:
Create different product selections in Mergado Editor for product groups to which you want to assign the same manufacturer data. For example, based on the values in the manufacturer element “MANUFACTURER”:
Once you have all your selections ready, you can go to the “Rules” section and select the “New Rule” option. The rule name can be anything, in our case, for example, “Add custom names for RESPONSIBLE_PRODUCER”. Select “Bulk rewrite by selections” as the rule type and select the newly created element:
Under “New value”, enter the “Proper name” of the manufacturer from your Allegro administration for each product selection:
In the Mergado Marketplaces campaign settings, match “Manufacturer data” to the feed element you created and start product feed synchronization:
After the synchronization is complete, check the “Validation” section in the Mergado Marketplaces application to see if there were any errors when uploading this data to Allegro for some offers.
You can use the same procedure for the “Responsible person for placing on the European market”. If you do not want to send this data for some products, just leave the element you created in the feed blank.
2. Import CSV file
You can also import data into the feed using CSV, where the first column will serve as the product identifier and the other columns will contain the elements and their values that you want to import into the feed. Let’s show this with the example of “Persons responsible for placing on the European market”.
We will prepare person cards in Allegro:
In the given project in Mergado Editor, we will create a new element that we will fill with values using CSV import:
The column names in the CSV file must have the same names as the existing elements in your project. Also, don’t forget to enter the “Custom Names” of the individual responsible persons from the Allegro administration:
Once you have the CSV file ready, you can go to the “Rules” section for the project and create a new rule.
Select “Import Data File” as the rule type and upload the CSV file:
After applying the rules, you can check in the product overview whether the element values have been filled in correctly:
In the Mergado Marketplaces campaign settings, then pair “Responsible persons for placing on the European market” with the feed element you created and start product feed synchronization.
More information about CSV import can be found here: New CSV import makes work easier in Mergado | Mergado.cz
2. Instructions and safety information
This can be a product user manual in the language of the sales channel, images of labels on the product packaging, or text with warnings. You can add this information in the campaign settings in the Mergado Marketplaces application, where you have two options to choose from:
- Do not send safety information (by doing so, you declare that the regulation does not apply to your products)
- Pair with a feed element
When pairing with a feed element, the values can be the following:
- Publicly accessible URL addresses starting with http:// or https://, from which files in PDF, JPEG, JPG, PNG formats with a maximum size of 50 MB can be downloaded.
- Plain text without HTML formatting with product warnings.
- NO_SAFETY_INFORMATION if you do not want to send safety information for the offer.
You can add information to the feed in two ways (see above for the procedure):
- Creating a new element and adding a value using selections
- Importing a CSV file
Since all three pieces of information are filled in at the offer level by Allegro, you can change this information in the campaign settings at any time. From December 13, it will be mandatory to fill in at least “Warnings and safety information” and “Manufacturer information” for all offers, otherwise Allegro reserves the right to deactivate the offer.
More information can be found on the Allegro website here.
Kaufland
At Kaufland, the data within the GPSR is provided at the product card level, and for products affected by the regulation, the following should be added:
- Name of the manufacturer / responsible person in the EU
- CE marking
- Safety instructions
Sales at Kaufland via Mergado Marketplaces (API connection)
This data can only be added via the Mergado Marketplaces application if you are creating new product cards for products or completing incomplete cards. The Mergado Marketplaces application does not allow the editing of existing product cards.
1. Creating new product cards or completing incomplete cards
If you are creating or completing product cards in the “Product Cards” section, you only need to add these three pieces of information if the product falls under GPSR:
2. Adding data to existing product cards
If you already have products on display at Kaufland, you can add the necessary data to the product cards in 2 ways:
a) Using a one-time import:
The import should contain the following:
- ean
- locale (e.g. cs-CZ)
And then the elements that you want to add within the GPSR, for example:
- product_safety_contact.name
- product_safety_contact.address (in the format Ulice 1, Město, 615 00, CZ”)
- product_safety_contact.email_address
- product_safety_contact.phone_number
- safety_guidelines (these are legal texts for which Kaufland has specific allowed values, such as: "'Warning! The product is not suitable for children under 36 months”)
- ce_certificate (publicly accessible URL address from which you can download a file in jpg, gif, svg, png, pdf format)
List of allowed values for safety_guidelines here.
You can create the file in Google Sheet, for example, and it could look like this:
You can then download the file in CSV format and upload it to Kaufland.
b) Via Mergado Editor, where you can easily create these elements and add their values in two ways (see above for the procedure):
- Creating new elements and adding their values using selections
- Importing a CSV file
In Mergado Editor, you just need to prepare these elements and fill them with the allowed values:
For the purposes of a one-time import, the file can only contain ean, locale, and new elements that you want to add within GPSR. Then download the feed from the Editor and perform a one-time import to Kaufland.
Selling on Kaufland via Mergado Editor (connection via feeds)
If you are connected to Kaufland via feeds and therefore already regularly send a product feed to Kaufland, you can add the following elements to your feed (see image above):
- product_safety_contact.name
- product_safety_contact.address (in the format “Ulice 1, Město, 615 00, CZ”)
- product_safety_contact.email_address
- product_safety_contact.phone_number
- safety_guidelines (these are legal texts for which Kaufland has specific permitted values, such as: "'Warning! The product is not suitable for children under 36 months”)
- ce_certificate (publicly accessible URL address from which you can download a file in jpg, gif, svg, png, pdf format)
List of permitted values for safety_guidelines here.
If you have an “Automatic upload of product data” set in Kaufland, there is no need to perform a one-time import. New data will be automatically added to Kaufland and sent when the output feed is next downloaded.
More information can be found here: General Product Safety Regulation (GPSR) - Kaufland Global Marketplace
Disclaimer:
This information does not constitute or replace legal advice. Please inform yourself at your own risk and seek legal advice if necessary as to whether the products you offer fall within the relevant categories and requirements.