Station 17: E-commerce and marketplaces
Distance sales, platform verification duties and what non-EU sellers must arrange before they ship.
The station guide
Working guides in this station
E-commerce and marketplaces Authorised Representatives for Distance Sellers: Appointing the EPR Mandate The representative who holds your registration in a state where you have no establishment: what the mandate covers, how to choose and contract one, and the failure modes when the paperwork and the register disagree. E-commerce and marketplaces Distance Selling: Your Duties Live at the Delivery Address Registration, representative and fees in each member state you deliver to - the distance seller's full position, the de-minimis reality, and the three legitimate strategies for the tail. E-commerce and marketplaces Dropshipping and Fulfilment: Finding the Producer in a Five-Name Chain The brand, the seller, the platform, the fulfilment house, the importer: role-by-role, who produces the sales packaging, who the shipping packaging, and who registers - in the models online trade actually uses. E-commerce and marketplaces Fee Exposure in the Channel: What Small Sellers Actually Pay, Per State The real arithmetic of distance-selling compliance: representative fees, minimum scheme charges, declaration time - and the pricing and range decisions that follow when the tail costs more than the margin. E-commerce and marketplaces Marketplace Seller Onboarding: The Packaging Checklist Registration numbers per state, representative evidence, category scope, packaging data for the platform's own reporting - the checklist that keeps a seller account trading through verification cycles. E-commerce and marketplaces Marketplace Verification: The Platform Checks Your Packaging Position Online marketplaces must verify that sellers are registered for EPR in the states they sell into - and act when they are not. How verification works in practice, what sellers are asked for, and the suspension ladder. E-commerce and marketplaces Non-EU Sellers: Shipping Packaged Goods Into the Union Third-country sellers meet the framework at the border and the checkout at once: importer roles, the representative estate, marketplace checks, and the customs seam where packaging data now travels with the goods. E-commerce and marketplaces Returns, Unboxing and the Channel's Waste Signature The channel's distinctive waste: return parcels, damaged-in-transit repacks, unboxing materials at the customer's bin. Designing the flows - and reporting them honestly in the packaging file. E-commerce and marketplaces Subscription, Refill and Mail-Order Models: Packaging in Recurring Commerce Recurring commerce designs its packaging as a system: subscription boxes under minimisation, refill pouches against their parent packs, mail-order pharmacy and book trade patterns, and the deposit and reuse options recurring delivery makes possible. E-commerce and marketplaces The Parcel Problem: Empty Space, Right-Sizing and the 50 Percent Rule E-commerce packaging joins grouped and transport formats under the 50 percent empty-space ceiling from 2030. How the ratio is measured on a parcel line, and the pack-bench programme that gets a fulfilment operation under it. E-commerce and marketplaces The Webshop Surface: Product Pages, Checkout and Packaging Information What the shop itself must show and say: packaging and disposal information at the product page, the seller's registration identity, delivery packaging choices at checkout, and the claims discipline for the 'plastic-free delivery' banner.