Consumer Packaging

The principal display panel on your lable is the part that carries your most important information, and is visible on the part of your packaging that is normally displayed to the consumer. 

This lable must:

• Be bilingual
• Tell you what the product is
• Tell you how much/many there is/are (size or count)
• Have your name and principal place of business (or in the case of textile manufacturers, your CA# if you chose to apply for it)

In the case of textiles, you should also add fibre content on your principal display panel.

Everything else that you want to add, that doesn't fit on your principal display panel can go on another lable. If you're using a secure tag, you can add this on the reverse side. In this case, I am using a separate card for the top and bottom of a stack of wipes.  This information is not a requirement. 

(Yes, I am aware that I forgot to put the care instructions in French... :( I only have 250 of them...)

If you would like more detailed/specific information pertaining to consumer packaging, try clicking HERE. There's a lot to summarize in one short post, so I tried to take only what's most important, but I'm human and I miss things. 

PST & Children's Clothes

This was recently pointed out to me, and I thought I'd share. I don't manufacture clothing, so it slipped my mind.
Children's clothing is not subject to PST. Any clothing for someone 14 and under, regardless of the size is PST exempt, which means you don't have to stress about collecting and remitting.

This journey is complicated enough. Here's one less thing to have to worry about. You're welcome.

CPSC & SBM

This is not a requirement to sell or be compliant in Canada. If you would like to sell your products to the USA, however, you should apply for a Small Batch Manufacturer number through the Consumer Product Safety Commission. It allows you to use the certifications from the companies that you purchase materials from. If you don't have this number and you want to legally sell in the USA, you have to have everything tested for yourself, and that can get quite costly.

Start Here!
This link will take you to the CPSC Business Portal. 

• click on Register Today
• read and acknowledge the terms
• fill out the forms to request a business account user ID

They will get back to you relatively quickly, but you might receive something like this. 

What do you do? We haven't made a letterhead yet!

It's actually very simple, and you don't need anything fancy. You can type up your letterhead in a couple of minutes and send it back to them. The header is optional, I just thought it looked pretty. The important stuff is in the body, and all you have to do is copy it with your information where I purpled mine out.

Print it, sign it, and fax or e-mail it back to them within 5 days, and you'll eventually get an e-mail back with instructions to set up your account. 

Once you're logged in to the CPSC Business Portal, the only thing you have left to do is click on the button that says Small Batch Manufacturers, answer the three questions and wait for your SBM number. It should come almost instantly.  And you're done!

Spend some time on the CPSC Website, there's a lot of useful information there.

Business License

Your business license will depend on the area you're working from. Some municipalities are active on The BC Business Registry, and some are not. As far as I know, all they do is e-mail you the forms, so you're probably going to have to make a trip to City Hall to submit them and pay.

Taxes

When you registered your business you may have opened some other accounts as well. If you haven't, now's the time to do that. 
If you don't expect to have sales of more than $30,000, you don't need a GST account, just keep in mind that if you sell $30,001, you will owe GST on the whole amount. 
There is no threshold for PST.

If you haven't taken care of that, here's the link. Go now!

Your Online Presence

Reserve your domain! 
Honestly, I think that this is something that you should have been thinking about back when you were deciding on a name. You need to be able to create a complete online presence, and it makes it much simpler for your future customers if your website and user IDs are the same wherever they try to look you up.
You can try using a service such as KnowEm. While there are paid options available, it also tells you what names are available on what platforms, and you can just go register accordingly.

As a minimum, you probably want: 

• a registered domain (www.yourbusiness.com)
• a Facebook page
• an Etsy store or some other sales platform

If you're into it, I would also suggest

• twitter
• instagram
• a blog

The more you are available, the more attention and traffic you can draw. But don't try to stretch yourself too thin, if you're not already active on social media it's easy to get overwhelmed trying to keep up with it all. Register an account if you're thinking about it (or even if you're not if you'd prefer nobody else getting to use the user ID), and take things one account at a time. Once your twitter is doing well, then start with instagram.

I'm no social media genius, I'm actually not that great at it at all, so I don't have many tips for getting followers. Just keep at it, network, and use #hashtags 

Bank Account!

This one is fairly straight forward. Take your Business Registration Certificate to the bank and open an account. The cost for this will depend on your financial institution, as well as what features you need. Start small, unless you know you're going to need certain features, opt for a basic account. You can always go back and upgrade later.