TSMA Yearbook 2018

42 2018 Yearbook imposed on the respective deficient responsible company or even on its management, product recalls up to a confiscation of the merchandise and a sale or import prohibition issued by competent national or local authorities. Regulatory authorities and consumer protection institutions are constantly increasing their demands, which information has to be displayed on labels, products and the packaging and it is highly difficult, if not impossible for medium-sized to smaller companies in our industry to cope with all these demands, unless they have the right and complete information available, which is very costly to obtain. The foregoing scenarios are not just theory. I have been involved in a case myself to assist a major well- known European outdoor brand to get its whole new spring collection released, when Italian customs authorities had confiscated it on the grounds of non- compliance with specific Italian labeling requirements, after it had been shipped from Far East to Italy to be imported into the European Union. In such kinds of situations, all alarm clocks are ringing, since any day of delayed shipment to the European retail customers of the brand’s ‘hot’ new collection becomes not only very costly, but does also severely damage a brand’s reputation. Another example: In product liability cases (in particular in the US), the lack of proper warning notices on sports products may also trigger very high damage compensation payments in addition to substantial fines imposed by courts and competent US authorities. The fact that such labeling requirements have not been harmonized to a major degree on this globe, makes it extremely difficult and again also quite expensive for any commercial operator to obtain the necessary information on a country by country level. Even in the EU, where a kind of harmonized system is in place, you still will have to look into national regulations and standards. If you are a Taiwanese company exporting e.g. bicycle helmets to Spain and Italy, do you know, whether your label on the products and/or or on the packaging needs to contain information in Spanish and/or Italian language?? 2. History behind the Labeling Project The question has been how to best deal with these issues and whether a databank based knowledge system could be put in place, where the whole sporting goods and leisure industry sector