Does the product passport also apply to small businesses?

What you concretely must do

What is expected of you

Article 22 of the ESPR (Regulation (EU) 2024/1781) specifically addresses small and medium-sized enterprises. The purpose is that the obligations under the ESPR also apply to small and medium-sized mattress manufacturers, but that delegated acts must give attention to the position of these enterprises, for example through support or adapted conditions. This is a different promise than exemption. For a mattress manufacturer with 10 to 100 employees, this means concretely a number of things.

The obligation also applies to you in principle

Article 22 does not set a lower limit for the number of employees or turnover below which an enterprise falls outside the ESPR. A small mattress company that places products on the EU market that fall under a delegated act is in principle subject to the same obligations as a large manufacturer. What exactly those obligations are and from when, depends on the delegated act established for mattresses — see what is a delegated act and why does it determine what I have to do?. For an idea of which products from the mattress industry fall within this, there is the page on which products in the mattress industry fall under the ESPR.

Account can be taken of your business size

Article 22 mentions the possibility that the Commission and Member States take measures to support small and medium-sized enterprises in compliance, such as guidance or simplified procedures. For an enterprise of this size this is relevant because it indicates that the legislator is aware of the burden that administrative obligations place on a smaller organisation without its own legal or compliance department. What that support concretely entails is not stated in Article 22 itself; that has yet to emerge from further development.

You remain responsible for the accuracy of the data

Regardless of business size, the manufacturer or importer remains responsible for the data that enters the product passport. For a small team this means that there must be someone who keeps track of what data is needed and where it comes from — from material composition to origin of components. For an overview of what must be included in the passport, see the page which data are included in the product passport for mattresses?. In the case of a box spring or a mattress with loose components, there is also the question of whether there is one passport for the whole or several for the constituent parts, which for a small enterprise with a limited number of models can be quite manageable — see does a box spring get one passport or multiple?

The timing of the obligation is not yet fixed

For small enterprises too, the exact obligation only arises at the moment when the delegated act for mattresses is established and enters into force. As long as it is not in place, there is no legal obligation for a product passport. More information on this is available on when does the product passport become mandatory for mattresses?

Where things go wrong in practice

A number of situations occur more frequently in smaller mattress enterprises than in large manufacturers, simply because the organisation and the workforce are arranged differently.

A first situation is that a small enterprise assumes that the rules are only intended for large, well-known mattress brands. Article 22 confirms precisely the opposite: small and medium-sized enterprises are in principle subject to the same obligations, although attention may be given to their position in implementation.

A second situation is that an enterprise does not take its own modifications to an existing model — a different cover, slightly different foam — into account in the data for the passport, because it is "the same mattress anyway". With a small assortment this seems harmless, but it can indeed have consequences for the accuracy of the data per model.

A third situation is that a small business places the responsibility entirely with the foam or filling material supplier, while the manufacturer that places the mattress on the market is ultimately responsible for the end product passport.

A fourth situation is that a business that also supplies the hotel industry thinks that commercial supply is subject to different rules than supply to a private customer. This distinction is not self-evident; see does the product passport also apply to mattresses supplied to hotels?

A fifth situation is that preparation is postponed until the delegated act is definitively in place, while a small business with limited capacity can actually benefit from early preparation of its own data structure.

What you can record

For a small or medium-sized mattress business, it is worthwhile to get a number of things in order in advance, even while the final obligation has not yet been established:

• An overview per mattress model of the materials and components used, including origin
• A list of suppliers per component (foam, cover, springs, possibly electronics for adjustable beds)
• Agreements with suppliers on the provision of material data, documented in a contract or purchasing terms
• An internal responsible person or contact for product passport-related questions, even if this is one person alongside other tasks
• Documentation of any variants of a basic model (different cover, different size), so that it is clear which data applies to which variant

For businesses that are uncertain whether a particular product or sales method falls under the obligation, additional pages are available, such as on private sales between consumers, selling second-hand mattresses en mattress covers and toppers as a separate product. These topics directly relate to the question of which exact products and sales flows a small business must include in its preparation for the product passport.