Selling Korean Cosmetics on Amazon and EU Marketplaces

22 May 2026 · The Glow Trade

The pallet cleared customs on Tuesday, the listings went live on Thursday, and on the following Monday the offer for your best seller is gone. The performance notification says the product may be inauthentic and asks for invoices from the last 365 days. You forward the wholesaler's invoice. It comes back rejected: no supplier address, no phone number, a quantity that does not cover what you have sold, and a barcode in the catalogue that is not the barcode printed on the units in your stockroom.

We supply retailers who sell on marketplaces, and this is how the first Amazon order goes wrong, more often than customs, freight or labelling. The marketplace is now the strictest cosmetics inspector most small importers will ever meet, because it checks paperwork on every listing and it checks before anyone has complained.

The short version

Since 13 December 2024, Amazon requires an EU responsible person's name and contact details displayed on every product listing in its EU stores, with safety information in the language of the country of sale.
Amazon accepts invoices for a policy-violation appeal only if they are dated within the last 365 days, cover the quantity sold per ASIN, and show the supplier's name, phone number, address and website.
Article 30 of Regulation (EU) 2022/2065 has obliged every online marketplace since 17 February 2024 to collect a trader's identity, payment account and trade-register details before the trader may sell, and to suspend traders who do not provide them.

Three laws stand between your listing and the buy button

The marketplace passes three EU laws down to you with its own deadlines attached.

Article 30 of the Digital Services Act (Regulation (EU) 2022/2065) makes the marketplace collect your legal name, address, payment account and trade or tax registration before you can list, and check them against public registers where it can. That is the account-verification stage, and Article 30(3) is the suspension that follows when a detail is missing or stale.

The General Product Safety Regulation (Regulation (EU) 2023/988) has applied since 13 December 2024. Cosmetics already have their own safety law, so Article 2(1) of the GPSR switches off most of its economic-operator chapter for them. The parts that stay on are the parts a marketplace can see: the responsible-person contact and the distance-selling rules in Article 19, which require the offer to show who the manufacturer and responsible person are, a picture, and any warnings. Article 22 obliges the marketplace to act on an authority's removal order within two working days, which is why a listing disappears fast and comes back slowly.

The Cosmetics Regulation (Regulation (EC) No 1223/2009) decides who that responsible person is. Article 4(5) makes each importer the responsible person for the units it brings into the EU, and Article 19(1)(a) puts that person's name and address on every box. If you buy from a European wholesaler that imported the goods, the responsible person is whoever is named on the box, and that is the name your listing has to carry. If you import from Korea yourself, it is you, and you also hold the product information file for 10 years under Article 11. Read who the responsible person is and what the role costs before choosing a route, because the marketplace asks for the answer on the Account Health page either way.

What Amazon actually asks for

Amazon's own GPSR notice to sellers lists eight actions. Stripped of repetition they come to four: an EU responsible person for every product; the responsible person's, the manufacturer's and, where applicable, the importer's contact details on the product; a type, batch or serial number on the product; and the responsible person plus manufacturer details, a picture and any warnings displayed in the listing, in the language of the country of sale.

Korean retail packaging satisfies the batch number and nothing else. The manufacturer's address is in Korean, the EU responsible person is not on the box until an importer puts it there, and the warnings are in Korean. A listing built from the brand's Korean-market photos therefore fails on sight, before any regulator looks at the product itself.

Our rule: do not list a unit on Amazon that you have not physically held with its EU over-label in place. The listing picture, the barcode and the responsible-person block should all come from the same unit that will ship to the customer.

The invoice trail that survives an appeal

Amazon's help page on invoices for policy-violation appeals sets the standard, and it is stricter than any customs declaration. The invoice must document a completed and fulfilled transaction, be dated within the past 365 days, show quantities that cover your sales for each ASIN in the notification, carry product identifiers such as name, model or barcode, and give the supplier's name, phone number, address and website. You may redact prices; you may not redact anything else. A pro forma invoice fails the first test, because nothing had been fulfilled when it was issued.

Three things about Korean stock break this trail, and none of them show on a pro forma.

Barcodes. Korean-issued barcodes start with 880; an EU repack or an older production run may carry a different one; the Amazon catalogue has exactly one attached to the ASIN. When the barcode on your invoice, the barcode on the unit and the barcode on the ASIN are not the same string, your stock is treated as a different product from the one you claimed to sell. The pattern we see in public seller reviews is always the same: inventory arrives, the account is deactivated for a barcode mismatch, the seller asks the wholesaler for a letter of authorisation or a certificate of origin, and receives a second copy of the invoice. Check the barcode on the unit against the ASIN before the purchase order, not after; the product data you need before you list covers how.

Mixed sources. Two suppliers for one ASIN means the quantity on any single invoice cannot cover the sales on that ASIN, and the appeal asks for exactly that. One supplier per ASIN, and change supplier by retiring the ASIN, not by topping it up.

Grey stock. A price well below every other EU wholesaler usually means goods that left Korea without the brand's knowledge, and the invoice behind them will not survive the supplier being contacted. How to spot grey-market and counterfeit K-beauty before you order lists the signals.

Brand gating, and what a letter of authorisation is worth

Many Korean brands are gated on Amazon's EU stores, so a new offer needs approval before it goes live, and the approval workflow asks for documents. Nobody publishes the acceptance criteria in full and they change without notice, so the useful question for a supplier is whether it can issue a letter of authorisation from the brand, and if not, whose name it can put on the invoice.

A letter of authorisation is a brand document. Only the brand or a distributor the brand has appointed can issue one, and a wholesaler that bought from a Korean trader cannot, however genuine the goods. A wholesaler's invoice is not an LOA, and a certificate of origin proves the goods are Korean for customs purposes, not that the brand consented to their sale. If the brand is gated and your supplier has neither an LOA nor a brand-side contact, request approval before you buy stock, not after. Stock you cannot list is the most expensive stock in the building.

The email to send before you order for a marketplace

Send this to any supplier before the first purchase order for stock you intend to list on Amazon or another EU marketplace. Every question maps to a line the marketplace will ask you for later.

Subject: Documentation for marketplace resale, before we order

Hello [name],

We intend to list part of this order on Amazon.de and other EU marketplaces, so before we confirm the purchase order please confirm the following in writing:

Your commercial invoice will show your full legal company name, registered address, telephone number and website, and will list each product by name, size and EAN barcode.

The EAN printed on the units you will ship is the same EAN shown on the invoice. Please send one photo of the barcode side of a unit from current stock for each SKU.

The name and EU address of the responsible person under Regulation (EC) No 1223/2009 as printed on the units, and confirmation that the over-label with this address, the ingredient list and the warnings is applied before dispatch.

Whether you can provide a letter of authorisation from the brand for resale on Amazon, or a brand-side contact who can.

Which language the over-label is printed in, so we can match it to the country of sale.

We will keep your invoice and these confirmations on file for at least 365 days, as the marketplace requires. If any point cannot be confirmed, please tell us which, and we will adjust the order.

Kind regards, [name, company, trade register number]

A supplier that answers all five in one reply is one you can build a marketplace business on.

Questions buyers ask

Do I need a separate GPSR responsible person if I already have a cosmetics responsible person?

No. The GPSR applies to cosmetics only where the Cosmetics Regulation does not already cover the same objective, and the responsible person designated under Article 4 of Regulation (EC) No 1223/2009 is the person whose contact details go in the listing. What changes is visibility: the marketplace wants that name and address displayed on the offer, not only printed on the box.

Can I sell on Amazon.de with the Korean box and a German sticker?

Yes, if the sticker carries the elements Article 19(1) of the Cosmetics Regulation requires, including the responsible person's name and EU address, the ingredient list and the warnings in German, and if the batch number on the box stays visible. If you print that German sticker yourself for goods already on the market in another EU country, Article 13(3) makes you a notifier to the Commission even though you are not the responsible person.

Does a certificate of origin help with an inauthentic complaint?

Rarely. A certificate of origin proves the goods qualify as Korean origin for customs purposes. Amazon's appeal process asks for supplier invoices from the last 365 days with contact details it can check, and a certificate of origin identifies neither your supplier nor your quantities.