What is GSPR and how does it affect you?

Prior to 2016, I'd say exports to the EU made up 10% of our sales. As a young business we found it exciting to be selling abroad, and were proud to have examples of our work in pretty much every European country. Following Brexit and the introduction of customs charges, this pushed our prices right up for our EU customers and therefore sales went down to about 5%.  There was no prior warning of GSPR; we found out the day before the rules were due to come in from running into a friend at the supermarket! There seemed to be no government guidance on the subject either, as if it was a complete non issue that really didn't matter to anyone...

We were shocked by the fact that nobody seems to be talking or writing about it when there must be thousands of small businesses in a similar position! Is it just too dull a subject, not click baity enough for todays media? Or is there another reason why news outlets do not want to publicise a negative consequence of our new world status?

From my understanding of it, GSPR rules were brought in to safeguard against the exponential rise in online sales in recent years, and in particular drop shipping, whereby extremely low quality or even dangerous goods can be purchased alarmingly easily, with absolutely no repercussions for the seller of said goods. With AI photography and content, it is so easy for unscrupulous sites to scam consumers into buying things that are not what they claim to be. This subject is worthy of another blog in itself, but the point being I can understand the reasons behind the tightening of regulations.

However, in order for a small UK craft business like ourselves to continue selling within the European Union, Black Fox Metalcraft would need to, amongst other things, have a representative in Europe who can be a contact point for customers and for dealing with complaince of these regulations. This can cost hundreds of pounds PER PRODUCT, and then, unless you happen to know your EU representative personally, there is the issue of not knowing whether they are legitimate - it seems like yet another opportunity for scammers to take advantage. We are far too small a business to even consider this, which means that we cannot sell our UK made weathervanes and other metalcraft items to EU countries, as well as Northern Ireland, anymore.

How does GSPR affect you?

Though losing 5% of our business is not going to immediately put us into administration, it does mean we have a lower income, which means we have less to spend with local businesses, even our weekly food shop budget is tightened. Multiply this by the thousands of small UK businesses who have also had a percentage of their sales wiped out overnight, and suddenly every business up and down the country, whether they export or not, is likely to see their sales drop. While it won't have an immediate traceable effect (therefore making the subject not newsworthy!), over the coming months and years if small businesses are losing sales, our economy WILL suffer and that affects every single one of us. Whether our government will bring UK regulations in line with GSPR will remain to be seen - but currently that seems like the only solution for most UK manufacturers.