Toy trainwreck approaching February 10

Legislation hastily passed by an overzealous Congress regarding children’s product safety threatens to shutter the vitality of a large portion of the p2p e-commerce community. The Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act (CPSIA) requires all manufacturers who create items for children 12 and under to submit their products for individual testing for safety.

These $10 handmade baby booties may cost more like $500 once the costs of compliance with the CPSIA are passed on to consumers.The law is a response to the Chinese lead in toy fiasco, but it also means that the seventeen year old girl who knits custom-made kids’ hats for sale on Etsy now needs to submit her $10 “product” for testing. For small scale crafters and traders, the thousands of dollars required for testing will simply put them out of business. [Never mind the VAST waste the law will induce by requiring EVERY toy on the shelves to be pulled and tested or else thrown into the landfill]. For more on the effects that Congress failed to foresee, see HERE and HERE.

Today crafters at Etsy and other markets are hosting a CPSIA Blog-In. We lend our support.

Image credit: CK Photography