GPSR on OTTO: manufacturer details and safety information in your listings

What the GPSR is and who it applies to

Regulation (EU) 2023/988 on general product safety (GPSR) has applied since 13 December 2024, according to Händlerbund. It replaced the old product safety directive and large parts of Germany's Product Safety Act. It covers consumer products made available in the EU – including through marketplaces such as otto.de.

For sellers, one duty matters most: the information has to appear in the offer itself, not just on the packaging or the leaflet. This article is not legal advice; check individual cases with a lawyer or your trade association.

What Art. 19 GPSR requires in an online offer

According to Händlerbund, anyone selling online must show the following clearly and visibly in the offer:

• Manufacturer: name, registered trade name or registered trademark, postal address and electronic address (email or a link to a contact form).
• EU responsible person, if the manufacturer is not established in the EU: name, address and electronic address.
• Product identification: an image, the product type and other product identifiers.
• Warnings and safety information in a language consumers in the target country can easily understand.

A link on its own will "as a rule" not be enough, Händlerbund says, and details only in the imprint or an FAQ page don't count. Warnings come from the manufacturer – you don't write your own.

Where the manufacturer details go on OTTO

In the products interface of the OTTO Market API (Products V5), the compliance block is a required field for every variation, just like EAN, SKU, description, pricing and media. Depending on the category you fill either productSafety or – for food and feed – foodInformation. According to the specification (as of October 2026), productSafety holds a list of addresses with these fields:

• name – company name of the manufacturer or distributor, max. 100 characters.
• address – full address with street, postcode, city and country on one line, no line breaks, max. 200 characters.
• regionCode – ISO 3166 alpha-2 country code, e.g. DE.
• email or url – one of the two is mandatory; the URL points to the contact details.
• phone – optional.
• roles – MANUFACTURER and/or DISTRIBUTOR. At least one address with the DISTRIBUTOR role is required.
• components – for sets, assign addresses to individual parts, e.g. "mouse" and "keyboard".

For details the specification refers to OTTO's help article on the product safety regulation in the partner help centre. It doesn't list a separate role for the EU responsible person – check there or with partner support how to record one for a manufacturer outside the EU.

Warnings, documents and product identification

Besides IMAGE, the specification's media types include WARNING_LABEL, SAFETY_DATASHEET, USER_MANUAL and ASSEMBLY_INSTRUCTIONS. Categories can make certain media mandatory via relatedMediaAssets – check your category's attribute definitions as described in Categories and attributes on OTTO.

Because a link or PDF alone is risky according to Händlerbund, put the actual warnings into the product description as text as well. Product images, product type and identifiers such as a type or model number identify the product; the EAN is mandatory on OTTO anyway.

Special cases: non-EU manufacturer, own brand, missing data

• Manufacturer outside the EU: according to Händlerbund, an EU responsible person must then be named – an importer, an authorised representative appointed in writing or, if there is no one else, a fulfilment service provider in the EU.
• Own brand: selling under your own brand makes you the manufacturer, says OnlinehändlerNews. If the brand and manufacturer names differ, state the manufacturer.
• No manufacturer known: entering yourself is a stopgap according to OnlinehändlerNews, but it brings manufacturer duties such as risk assessment and recalls. Better: don't sell products without a traceable manufacturer.
• Modified products: if you change a product in a way that creates new risks, you can become the manufacturer yourself, according to Händlerbund.

Checklist for your OTTO listings

1. Fill the compliance block for every variation: at least one DISTRIBUTOR address plus the manufacturer address with the MANUFACTURER role.
2. Check name, one-line address, country code and email or contact URL for each address; stay within the length limits.
3. For manufacturers outside the EU, establish the EU responsible person and record it the way OTTO specifies.
4. Copy the manufacturer's warnings and safety information verbatim into the description as text.
5. Upload the warning label, safety data sheet or manual as media with the matching type where available or required by the category.
6. For sets, assign addresses to the parts via components.
7. After uploading, check the marketplace status for errors.

Risks: warning letters and products that don't go live

Warning letters: according to Händlerbund, missing manufacturer details are already the subject of competition-law warning letters (Abmahnungen), and fines are possible too. In August 2026 IT-Recht Kanzlei described a case where a competitor made a test purchase and then demanded a cease-and-desist declaration and legal fees over missing manufacturer details – the GPSR contains market-conduct rules, so breaches are also unfair competition.

Listing problems: because compliance is a required field, variations without it fail validation. Missing manufacturer details are among the typical reasons a product doesn't go live – how to read the error list is covered in Product not visible on otto.de?. After a large data correction it pays to look from the outside too: MarktRank marks products whose otto.de page no longer loads as "not live" and rechecks them daily.

Frequently asked questions