Case study: bringing CPSC eFiling in-house and saving $6,000 across 40 SKUs
The situation
CPSC made electronic filing mandatory for regulated consumer products. Every SKU now needed proper registration, documentation, and data on file before it could clear customs.
The easy route was outsourcing it. Third-party services quoted $150 per SKU. Across our 40 active U.S. SKUs, that's roughly $6,000 for something we'd have to pay again every time a certificate renewed or a new SKU launched.
We decided to build the process in-house instead.
What building it in-house meant
Nobody on the team had done this before, so it started with reading. The CPSC documentation, the Reference PGA Message Set, all of it.
From there:
We registered the organization on the CPSC Product Registry.
We standardized SKU data using CPSC's bulk upload templates.
We collected and validated everything CPSC required: CPC certificates, testing reports, manufacturer information, laboratory details, and identifier numbers for each SKU.
We hit CSV formatting errors on the bulk uploads more than once. Worked through them until the files passed validation.
By the end, we had a workflow that isn't a one-time fix. It's repeatable for every new product registration and every compliance update going forward.
What it got us
Roughly $6,000 saved by not paying a third party per SKU.
Full compliance with CPSC's current eFiling requirements.
Full ownership of our compliance data, nobody else holding it or gatekeeping updates.
Faster turnaround when a CPC certificate or testing report renews, since the process lives in-house now instead of routing through a vendor.
A process that scales. New SKU launches don't come with a new invoice attached.
Why it mattered
This wasn't really about the $6,000, though that's real money. It was about not handing off a piece of regulatory compliance to a vendor and losing visibility into how it works.
Now if something changes on CPSC's end, we're not waiting on someone else to catch it.