The EU’s new packaging rules, PPWR, have just made selling to Europe a lot harder for my wife’s jewellery business.
For the past few months, we’ve been working hard on a website for ako & sila, my wife Jovelyn’s jewellery business. Hired a new member of staff to run the day to day and go live on Instagram and TikTok.
Live selling works
Live selling isn’t a gimmick, and I’m not just saying that because it’s my own household. I’ve watched the same thing take off in toys over the past year. TikTok Shop Live is now a genuine growth channel for collectables, not a novelty add-on. Watching the same mechanic work for jewellery, mostly on Instagram Live, only confirms it. On camera, live, taking questions, building the kind of trust a static product listing never will.
It’s starting to work. Orders coming in. We’ve been shipping to Europe. Then PPWR happens.
The PPWR problem
The EU’s new packaging rules went live on 12 August. PPWR, in the jargon. Doesn’t matter where you ship from, if your goods are packaged and they’re going into the EU, it applies to you now.
Amazon and the other juggernauts will just hire a new compliance team. Job done, moving on.
A small business doesn’t get that option. You waste time registering with 27 different entities, one per country, and the real number isn’t a token fee. Between the authorised representative you’re required to have sitting inside each member state and the registration and reporting costs on top, you’re looking at anywhere from around 150 to over 1,000 euros a year, per country, before a single scheme fee based on weight gets added. Sell into a handful of EU countries at genuinely small volumes and the honest annual total lands somewhere in the hundreds to low thousands of euros, for the privilege of shipping maybe a parcel or two a month.
Why small businesses are switching off
This is exactly why so many smaller businesses have just switched off shipping to so many European countries. Not because the demand wasn’t there. Because the paperwork cost more than the sales.
That’s the choice Jovelyn’s looking at now too. Keep chasing every order in a market that just added weeks of paperwork per country, or focus on the ones that don’t punish her for being small.
I’m a fervent supporter of the EU. If it wasn’t for freedom of movement, I’d never have gone to the UK, back when it was still part of the EU, to work and build the life I’ve had. Funny how the country that gave me that chance decided the next generation didn’t need it. I’m also a strong believer that being bound together makes us stronger trading partners.
But sometimes I have to admit that EU lawmakers come up with some crap.
