Shipping clothing to the United States

The first question is age, not fabric

Two garments can be cut from the same roll and land in different worlds. What separates them is who they are meant for: an adult shirt may need no certificate at all, while the same model in a child's size needs a certificate backed by a laboratory CPSC has accepted.

The definition turns on design and intent, not on the size label alone. A small adult tee is not a children's product; a garment decorated, cut and marketed for children is one even if an adult could wear it. CPSC says plainly that children's apparel gets none of the leniency adult apparel gets.

For adult clothing, everything turns on the fabric

The rule behind apparel is a flammability standard, and it exempts fabrics whose behaviour is already known. Two exemptions matter, and they are worth reading word for word because a seller can check them against a supplier's spec sheet without any testing at all.

2.6 ounces per square yard is 88.2 g/m². A mid-weight cotton jersey usually clears it; a fine voile usually does not. Note the word plain: a brushed fleece or a long-pile knit is a raised-fiber surface, so it falls outside the first exemption even when it is heavy, and outside the second unless its fibres are on the list.

When a garment is exempt from testing, CPSC goes one step further and says it will not enforce the certificate requirement for it.

The parcel is not silent, though. It carries a declaration instead of a certificate: Disclaim B, with the intended use code for products meant for people aged 13 or over.

When a GCC is needed anyway

Outside those exemptions, an adult garment needs a general certificate, and the certificate has to rest on something. CPSC describes what that something is, and it is less demanding than sellers fear.

In practice that means a mill's own flammability report can support your certificate, provided it covers the fabric you actually used. This is the single most useful sentence to send a supplier: you are not asking them to pay for a new accredited laboratory, you are asking for the report they already have.

Children's clothing, and sleepwear apart

For children the certificate is a CPC, and the testing behind it must come from a laboratory CPSC has accepted. That is the cost and the delay, and it cannot be met with a supplier's internal report.

Sleepwear is its own subject, with two standards split by size, and it catches sellers who think of a nightdress as just another garment.

Then come the rules that follow the trimmings rather than the cloth: lead in metal and in surface coatings, phthalates in plastic prints and appliqués, small parts on anything a young child could detach. A plain cotton dress with a painted wooden button is touched by more rules than the dress alone would be.

What to ask your supplier, in one message

Most of the work is one email, and it is the step that decides your timeline because it depends on someone else. Ask for these four things at once rather than in sequence.

• The fabric's composition and weight in g/m², and whether the surface is plain or raised.
• Any flammability test report they hold for that fabric, with its date.
• For a children's garment, the name and address of the laboratory, and whether CPSC has accepted it.
• The address where the garment was made, and the month and year of manufacture.

Our questions ask you the same things in plain language, work out which of the two regimes you are in, and produce either the certificate or the declaration with the annex that goes on the parcel. It costs nothing until there is a document to produce.

• CPC or GCC: which certificate is yours
• The whole procedure, in order
• The annex that travels with the parcel