Customs recently conducted large-scale inspections? Be careful in product selection and development (product selection benefits included)

Recently, some sellers reported that there was a new situation at the customs, and some shipments were detained for inspection, resulting in a significant delay in the warehouse entry time ! And it all involved the CPSC, and many different categories of products were affected!

CPSC is the abbreviation of the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission. Its responsibility is to protect the interests of consumers and safeguard their personal safety by reducing the potential dangers of consumer products. In the past, CPSC did not have administrative enforcement power and was similar to a consumer association.

However, the CPSC underwent a reform on March 22 , and its overall organizational nature was upgraded to PGA (government regulatory agency). Therefore, regardless of whether the shipment enters the United States through customs or airports, the CPSC has the right to mark and review it. If the product falls under the jurisdiction of the CPSC, the seller can be required to provide a CPSC test report and certification.

Some media wrote that the jurisdiction of CPSC is toys, because the CPC certificate for toys in the United States is issued by CPSC, but in fact, the jurisdiction of CPSC is very broad. In addition to children's products, some regular products need to be supervised by CPSC, such as art paints, glues and adhesives, batteries, bicycle helmets, etc. Even some products that are certified and supervised by FDA, such as some drugs and foods, are also supervised by CPSC.

Therefore, many sellers that are not in the children’s category are also detained at customs for inspection, because they all fall under the jurisdiction of the CPSC (for a specific list of jurisdictions, you can ask for the link to the CPSC’s official website).

From the information collected so far, CPSC has the right to intercept goods after inspection and not allow customs clearance, and will issue a formal detention notice to the registered importer and the customs broker handling the goods. The notice will state the reason for the detention and the contact information of the CPSC investigator responsible for handling the detained goods, so that importers or brokers can contact them and provide reasonable test results/certifications or other evidence.

Because CPSC has no other certifications and tests except CPC product certification for children, it is equivalent to spot-checking whether the current shipment products meet the requirements for corresponding testing. Therefore, sellers must do the corresponding work when selecting products, and investigate what safety certification the selected product needs.

Under the influence of the epidemic last year, cross-border e-commerce is now very popular, and there are many new sellers entering the market. Many new sellers can easily go wrong in the first and most critical link - product selection. Here I will help new sellers sort out a few points to pay attention to ( old sellers can directly pull to the back to receive benefits )

First of all, due to the characteristics of the cross-border e-commerce industry, logistics costs account for a relatively high proportion. New sellers have a low starting point and should start with small volume and weight. This way, the pressure of stocking inventory is small and the logistics costs can be controlled. Relatively speaking, the profit may not be that high, but the operation difficulty is low and it is suitable for newcomers.

In terms of product selection, newbies should avoid traditional popular categories. The more popular the product, the more competition there is. It is easy for small sellers to lose their starting capital in these large categories. Small and medium-sized sellers should try to choose small vertical categories with potential for blockbuster sales . Even if the total market volume is smaller, as long as they can gain a foothold, they will win.

If you are a seller who has already passed the entry level and want to make a try in popular categories, I suggest that you differentiate your products within the major categories. However, differentiation here cannot be just for the sake of being different. The premise of differentiation is still to start from the real needs and pain points of consumers. Using minor modifications to solve one or two pain points is a very effective differentiation method.

In order to help you avoid pitfalls when selecting products, we have prepared a live broadcast next Thursday night to talk to you in detail about differentiated product selection and analysis of the characteristics of potential hot-selling products!