Selling on Etsy to the United States: what CPSC expects
Etsy does not file for you, and the difference between its two options decides how much work each parcel is.
Updated 11 October 2026 · 6 min read
What Etsy tells its sellers
Etsy's help page is short and unusually clear for a marketplace. It puts the obligation on the seller who imports, from the same date as everyone else.
« Starting July 8, 2026, importers of certain consumer products will be required to submit product safety compliance information electronically before those products can enter the United States. »It also states plainly what happens when the data is missing, which is the part sellers usually hear through rumour.
Read it once more and notice who is addressed. Etsy writes to importers, and for a direct-to-buyer parcel leaving France, the importer is you. The platform hosts the sale; it does not stand between your product and the American border, and nothing in its help pages suggests otherwise.
« If required eFiling information isn't submitted, your shipment may be delayed, held for inspection, or stopped at the border. »Two roads, and only one of them is yours
Etsy offers the choice between working with a customs broker and registering the product with CPSC. For a shop sending parcels by post from France, the choice is already made.
« If you import by postal mail, this option is required. »That single sentence is the most useful thing on Etsy's page for a French seller: the Product Registry is not the convenient option, it is the one that applies. Colissimo says the same from the other side, advising regular shippers to register and describing what a parcel carries when they have.
What the Registry buys you is brevity. Instead of restating a whole certificate for every parcel, the entry is made once and the parcel carries identifiers that point back to it. That is why shops with a steady flow of small orders end up there: the work is front-loaded, and each subsequent order inherits it.
« register your products in the CPSC Product Registry now »Personalised and made-to-order items
Half of Etsy is customisation, so the question comes up immediately: if I engrave a blank, am I importing a finished product? Etsy's answer is that CPSC usually treats it as finished.
« The CPSC usually considers products "finished" at the time they're imported-even if you plan to decorate, personalize, or customize them later-if they could be sold as-is. »For a children's item, Etsy adds the constraint that decides your budget: the testing has to come from a laboratory CPSC has approved, not from any laboratory you like.
« For children's products, testing must be conducted by a CPSC-approved laboratory. »The order that wastes the least time
Answer the questions about your product first: they are free and they decide everything else. If a rule names it, ask your manufacturer for what the certificate has to state before anything else - that is the step that takes days, because it depends on someone else replying.
While you wait, open the CPSC account. Then issue the certificate, register the product, and put the three identifiers on the annex you attach to each parcel. After that, a new order is a one-minute job: the same annex, a new line.
Two habits save the most trouble afterwards. Keep one file per product with the certificate, the Registry identifiers and the supplier's replies, so a question from customs six months later is a search rather than an investigation. And re-issue when something real changes - a new supplier, a new component, a new colourway with a different coating - because the identifiers describe a version, not a name.
Etsy says it in its own words, and it is the best advice on the page: plan ahead, because registering and gathering certificate information takes time you will not have on the day an order comes in.
« Give yourself enough time to register and gather your certificate information before importing products into the US. »