Who Is the Manufacturer of a Printed Kids' Shirt?

The Consumer Product Safety Commission publishes free sample Children's Product Certificates so businesses can see what one looks like. The sample it chose for clothing is issued by a screen printer. Not by a blank mill. Not by an importer. By a shop with a press, certifying a baby bodysuit with a screen printed decoration.

If you decorate youth apparel, or you buy it, that single fact settles a question the trade has spent fifteen years avoiding: when a shirt for a child passes through a print shop, the print shop is the manufacturer of the product that reaches the customer.

This article lays out the support for that, the reasons the blank supplier's paperwork does not transfer, and what it means in practice for a 200-piece school order. It is general information about federal regulation, not legal advice. We are printers.

Exhibit A: CPSC's own worked example

CPSC maintains a page of sample certificates. The clothing example describes a "baby bodysuit garment with screen printed decoration," gives it model numbers, and names the certifier: a fictional shop called Mama Mama Screenprinters of Boston, Massachusetts.

The annotations matter as much as the certificate. They note that suppliers of the blank garment or the screen-printing ink — the individual components — may have performed testing, and that the manufacturer may rely on those component certifications while still issuing its own certificate for the finished product.

That is the whole architecture in one sentence. Component testing flows up. Certification stops with the finished product, and the finished product is the decorated garment.

It is worth pausing on the choice of example. CPSC could have illustrated the clothing certificate with an imported tee from an apparel importer, which is statistically the most common case. It picked a decorator. That is not an accident; it is the agency answering the question that businesses actually ask.

Exhibit B: the rule text

The certification rules live at 16 CFR part 1110. Section 1110.7 assigns the obligation:

• 1110.7(a) — for an imported finished product, the importer is the finished product certifier that must issue a finished product certificate.
• 1110.7(b) — for a finished product manufactured in the United States, "the manufacturer is the finished product certifier." If that product is privately labeled, the private labeler is the certifier instead.

A US print shop buying blanks from a US distributor is not importing anything. It is manufacturing a finished product domestically, out of components. Under 1110.7(b) that makes it the certifier — and the private-labeler clause is worth noting too, because a great deal of decorated apparel goes out under somebody else's brand.

Exhibit C: the promotional products guidance

CPSC publishes a guide to federal safety laws for the promotional products industry — the closest thing to a document written for our trade. It states that importers and manufacturers of finished children's products are responsible for complying with children's product regulations, and then gets specific about the decorator's position: if you are a distributor and you, at your client's direction, direct the final production of a blank general use product into a children's product, then you are the responsible party. Facts and circumstances determine who finished the children's product.

Read that carefully, because it describes the ordinary school order exactly. A blank youth tee sitting on a distributor's shelf is arguably a general use product. Print a first-grade class name on it and it is unambiguously a children's product. The transformation happened in the print shop.

There is also a 2012 letter from CPSC's then-General Counsel, written after an industry product safety summit, stating that a distributor who buys a compliant blank and performs an operation that transforms the garment before it is sold to the end buyer is responsible as a manufacturer. It is the crispest statement of the rule we have seen. We could only reach it through a secondary source that quotes it and hosts a copy, and we could not find it on CPSC's own site, so we cite it as reported rather than as primary. The first two exhibits carry the argument without it.

Why the blank supplier's certificate does not transfer

This is the objection every shop raises, and it deserves a straight answer rather than a citation.

Your supplier certified a blank garment. What you ship is a different product. Different composition — there is ink or thread on it that was not tested as part of that assembly. Different appearance. Different identity, usually sold under a school's or a brand's name. A certificate identifies a product; yours is not the product on their certificate.

The rule anticipates this and gives you something better than a transfer. 16 CFR part 1109 lets the finished-product certifier rely on component-part testing, including testing arranged and paid for by someone else. The blank supplier's test data is a component record. The ink maker's report is a component record. You assemble them, exercise due care, and issue one certificate for the garment. That is not a loophole; it is the intended design, and it is the reason a small shop can do youth work at all. We wrote that up separately in the component-part testing article.

What the big distributors actually say is instructive. Neither of the two national blank distributors we buy from publishes a style-by-style children's product certificate, and one of them states in writing that customers may have their own obligations under product safety standards. They are telling you the same thing this article is telling you. It is just phrased as a disclaimer instead of an explanation.

Does embroidery count?

The guidance language is "an operation that transforms the garment in any way." Embroidery adds thread, and needle penetrations, and usually a backing. On the plain reading, the analysis is the same as printing.

We found no CPSC document that addresses embroidery specifically — not one that includes it and not one that excludes it. So we will not tell you embroidery is treated differently, and we will not tell you a court or the Commission has held it is the same. What we can say is that the ordinary reading of the rule does not carve it out, and that thread itself is a textile that appears to fall within the lead-content determination for dyed fibers at 16 CFR 1500.91(d)(7) — which is our reading of the rule text, not a CPSC statement. Metallic threads, metallic-wrapped threads and threads with non-dye coatings fall outside it, as do backings and any applied embellishment.

What this looks like on a real order

Two hundred youth tees for an elementary school, one-color front print. Here is how the responsibility actually distributes:

• The blank mill documents the fabric — fiber content, weight, surface type, absence of non-dye treatments — and its own components. It certifies a blank.
• The ink maker holds third-party test data on the ink line and colors, often as a cured film, which is expressly permitted at 16 CFR 1109.11.
• The print shop determines the item is a children's product, collects both sets of documents, checks that what ran on press is identical in all material respects to what was tested, keeps lot-level traceability, applies a permanent tracking label, and issues the certificate.
• The school receives the certificate with the shipment and keeps it. Section 19(b) of the Consumer Product Safety Act provides a good-faith reliance defense for a distributor or retailer who holds a proper certificate — which is exactly why a buyer should want one in the file.

Nothing in that list is expensive. The expensive version is the one where nobody did any of it and a parent asks a question.

Questions

Is the screen printer legally the manufacturer of a kids' shirt?

For a garment decorated in the United States, yes. 16 CFR 1110.7(b) makes the manufacturer of a domestically manufactured finished product the finished product certifier, and CPSC's own sample Children's Product Certificate for clothing is issued by a screen printer for a baby bodysuit with screen printed decoration. CPSC's promotional-products guidance adds that a party who directs the final production of a blank general use product into a children's product is the responsible party.

Can I just use my blank supplier's Children's Product Certificate?

No. That certificate identifies a blank garment, and a decorated garment is a different finished product with different composition and identity. The supplier's documentation is a component-part record you may rely on under 16 CFR part 1109 when issuing your own certificate for the finished garment, which is genuinely useful, but it is not a substitute for that certificate.

Do blank distributors provide certificates for youth styles?

Generally not on a style-by-style basis. The national distributors we buy from do not publish per-style children's product certificates, and one states in writing that customers may have their own obligations under product safety standards. Ask for fiber content, fabric weight and surface type, confirmation that there are no non-dye treatments or applications, component documentation for thread and trim, and lot numbers for traceability.

Does embroidery make me the manufacturer too?

On the ordinary reading of the guidance, which turns on performing an operation that transforms the garment in any way, yes — embroidery adds thread, needle penetrations and backing. We found no CPSC document addressing embroidery specifically in either direction, so we treat it the same as printing rather than assume an exemption exists.

What if the shirts go out under the school's name rather than ours?

16 CFR 1110.7(b) provides that if a finished product manufactured in the United States is privately labeled, the private labeler is the finished product certifier. A great deal of decorated apparel is effectively private labeled, so who certifies should be settled in writing at order time rather than assumed after delivery.

Keep reading

CPSIA compliance hub for custom kids' apparel · What goes on a Children's Product Certificate · Component-part testing · What schools should require · Youth and toddler blanks