Hello and good evening,
Unfortunately once again we are having to remind people that out Declaration of Conformities (DoC) are ONLY for people who have purchased those products from us Tactile Treasures Limited trading as Tactile Craft Supplies.
Sadly we are experiencing a large number of DoC requests from people who have ordered the bare minimum from us. These minimum orders are NORMALLY not enough to do the tests for UKCA compliance never mind actually sell anything made, but we never see them again. This could be one of two reasons; firstly they decided not to pursue the selling route or, secondly, they then used another suppliers products with our DoC! We are a small independent husband and wife team and spent thousands of pounds testing products so please don’t insult us by using our DoC with another company’s product, its illegal and unethical. If Trading Standards get involved you may be prosecuted and your insurance will certainly be invalid.
If you do not want to buy your supplies from us, that fine but please don’t expect to use our documentation! If you can get your supplies cheaper it probably because they haven’t spent a small fortune testing the products themselves, like we do, ensuring the highest quality products are available for your toy making needs. I make no apologies for the bluntness of my words. Like all small companies times are tough. If you cannot support us in the short term by repeatably buying the products that you need to make your supplies from us, then we won’t be around to test the products in the long term.
One pair of safety eyes and a request for the DoC is not supporting us in fact it’s the opposite its destroying us. We cannot survive on the support of one pair of eyes when the independent testing for them alone was several hundred pounds! To do the EN71 tests correctly you will need a minimum of two sets of eyes to test the two sample toys for your technical file.
We issue a DoC to protect our brand so remember if Trading Standards do inspect your technical file for compliance and for traceability, the first thing they will do is ask us for the full certificate. I will ask for your name and can then inform them whether or not you are intitled to hold our DoC on file!
It is also worth remembering that our products may come from a different source to another supplier meaning that the testing documentation isn’t even relevant! For example our plastic teether range is made for us, for our chosen pantone colours. We have tested EVERY colour we sell. Buying from elsewhere will NOT be covered under our DoC.
With this in mind we are now going to be setting minimum order quantities for each of our free DoC’s. If you haven’t purchased the required amount you will not be eligible for the paperwork. Each minimum order quantity will be on the listing for that particular document. The paid for certificates will have no minimum order as you have purchased the certificate. We will not be issuing any certificates for a few days until we have worked through and altered the listings to reflect a minimum quantity.
I would like to say a huge thank you to those of you that do use our products and those of you that respect the effort we go to, to ensure you have tested products that are safe to use and have the correct testing and documentation for your toy making and technical file. We do understand the difficulties surrounding getting EN71 supplies as this is how our whole journey started out!
Finally if you have managed to get through this lengthy rant please be assured we ARE looking in to the REACH aspect and am getting some positive responses. I am hoping to collate a few more answers and will be updating you in the next week or so as to how we are going.
Many thanks for both your patience and understanding.
Best Regards
Paul & Dawn