What is GPSR and which products does it affect?

The GPSR (General Product Safety Regulation, EU 2023/988) has applied since 13 December 2024 and covers almost all non-food consumer products sold in the EU — including online. It requires that each product carries traceable safety information: manufacturer and importer details, warnings and safety instructions, a unique product identifier, and (for many categories) a documented risk assessment. Retailers and online shops that place products on the EU market share responsibility, so the underlying product data has to be complete, correct and available per listing.

Does a PIM system make my shop legally compliant?

No — and any vendor claiming otherwise is overselling. No software makes a shop automatically compliant; legal responsibility stays with the manufacturer, importer or retailer. What a PIM does is make compliance manageable: it holds the mandatory fields and documents in one place, versions every change with an audit trail, enforces required attributes per product category, runs an approval workflow before anything publishes, and distributes the correct compliance data to each channel. It turns compliance from scattered spreadsheets into a controlled, repeatable process.

Which compliance standards can Productbay manage?

Productbay manages the data and documents behind the common EU frameworks in one place: GPSR (safety information, manufacturer/importer data, warnings), CE marking and declarations of conformity, REACH (SVHC/substance data), LMIV (food information, allergens, nutrition), MDR (medical devices) and GHS/CLP (hazard labelling). Compliance fields are modelled as attribute groups per category, safety documents (datasheets, certificates, manuals) are stored and versioned in the built-in DAM, and everything is published to your shop and marketplace feeds with a review step first.

Who is responsible for GPSR compliance — the manufacturer or the retailer?

It depends on the role. The manufacturer carries the primary obligation, but importers and, in many cases, retailers and online marketplaces share duties — especially when importing from outside the EU or acting as the responsible economic operator. In practice this means the retailer must be able to show, per product, that the required safety information exists and reaches the customer. This is a data problem as much as a legal one, which is why centralising it in a PIM matters. This is general information, not legal advice — confirm your specific obligations with a qualified advisor.

How does Productbay keep compliance documents up to date across channels?

Every compliance document and mandatory field lives in one central record with full version history. When a certificate is renewed or a warning changes, you update it once; Productbay re-publishes the corrected data to Shopify, Shopware and every connected marketplace feed, so a channel never keeps a stale safety document. An approval workflow (four-eyes principle) and role-based access make sure only reviewed changes go live.

Is Productbay suitable for Austrian and DACH retailers with EU compliance needs?

Yes. Productbay is built in Vienna for DACH specialist retailers, brands and distributors, and models the EU compliance frameworks (GPSR, CE, REACH, LMIV, MDR, GHS) that apply across Austria, Germany and Switzerland. Multilingual product data (DE/EN and 40+ languages via AI), central document management and per-channel publishing make it a fit for retailers that sell regulated products across EU markets.

PIM for Product Compliance: GPSR, CE, REACH & LMIV

Since the GPSR (General Product Safety Regulation) took effect on 13 December 2024, compliance stopped being a manufacturer-only concern. Every retailer and online shop that places products on the EU market now has to prove, per product, that the required safety information exists and reaches the customer. Add CE marking, REACH, LMIV for food, MDR for medical devices and GHS/CLP for hazardous goods, and product data becomes a legal deliverable — not just a marketing asset.

The catch is that compliance is a data problem before it is a legal one. The obligations are clear; what breaks is holding the mandatory fields, certificates and warnings correctly, keeping them current, and getting them onto every channel. Spreadsheets and shared drives cannot version a certificate, enforce a required field or prove who changed what — which is exactly where a PIM comes in.

What the EU compliance frameworks require of your product data

Each framework adds its own mandatory fields and documents on top of normal master data:

Framework	Applies to	Data & documents it demands
GPSR	Almost all non-food consumer products	Manufacturer & importer details, warnings, safety instructions, unique product identifier, risk assessment
CE marking	Toys, electronics, machinery, PPE and more	Declaration of conformity, technical documentation, CE label data
REACH	Products containing chemical substances	SVHC / substance-of-concern data, safety data sheets
LMIV	Food and beverages	Ingredients, allergens, nutrition table, origin, mandatory declarations
MDR	Medical devices	UDI, instructions for use, conformity documentation
GHS / CLP	Chemicals & hazardous goods	Hazard pictograms, signal words, H/P statements

None of these fit a generic product table. Each needs structured, category-specific attributes plus attached documents — and each has to travel to the right channel in the right format.

Why spreadsheets fail at compliance

No version history: when a certificate is renewed or a warning changes, an Excel cell overwrites the old value with no trace. You cannot prove what was live when.
No enforced completeness: nothing stops a product going live without its required GPSR fields — the gap only shows up when a marketplace rejects the listing or an authority asks.
No document link: the declaration of conformity lives in someone's inbox, not attached to the product record.
No channel control: the same product needs different compliance formatting for Shopify, Amazon and OTTO — done by hand, it drifts.

Honest caveat: no PIM — and no software at all — makes your shop automatically compliant. The legal responsibility stays with you. What a PIM does is make the process controlled and repeatable instead of manual and error-prone.

How Productbay makes compliance manageable

Productbay is built for specialist retailers, brands and distributors who sell regulated products — and it treats compliance data as first-class:

Compliance attribute groups: model GPSR, CE, REACH, LMIV, MDR and GHS fields per product category, with required attributes enforced before a product can publish.
Versioned document management: store declarations of conformity, safety data sheets, certificates and manuals in the built-in DAM, each with full version history and an audit trail.
Approval workflow: a four-eyes review queue and role-based access mean only checked compliance changes go live.
Per-channel distribution: republish corrected compliance data to Shopify, Shopware and marketplace feeds (Amazon, OTTO, Kaufland), each in the right format, so no channel keeps a stale safety document.
AI enrichment with review: AI reads attributes and declarations out of supplier PDFs and datasheets, translates mandatory text into 40+ languages, and always routes through a review step before publishing.

Productbay is built in Vienna for DACH retailers handling multi-supplier, multi-channel catalogs. For food-specific rules see PIM for food & beverage, and to compare it against enterprise options, read the best PIM systems 2026 comparison.

PIM for Product Compliance: GPSR, CE, REACH & LMIV in One System

What the EU compliance frameworks require of your product data

Why spreadsheets fail at compliance

How Productbay makes compliance manageable

Frequently Asked Questions

See your compliance data in one place

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