If you import seating into the United States, two acronyms decide whether your container clears customs cleanly: GCC and CPC. They sound interchangeable. They are not. We have watched buyers issue the wrong one and then scramble at the port, so here is the plain version from the manufacturing side, plus a 2026 deadline you should put in your calendar now.
GCC: the general-use certificate
A General Certificate of Conformity covers a general-use product — an adult office chair, a patio rocker, a leisure chair for grown-ups. It states that the product meets the CPSC safety rules that apply to it, identifies the product, names each rule, and lists who tested it and where. For a general-use chair, CPSC does not require that testing be done at an accredited third-party lab — the certificate is based on a test of the product, and you keep the records. It is the lighter path, and most of what we ship to retail rides on a GCC.
CPC: the children's-product certificate
A Children's Product Certificate is the harder one. It applies to products designed or intended primarily for children 12 and under — and a glider or small rocker marketed for a child crosses that line. A CPC has to be based on testing at a CPSC-accepted third-party laboratory, under 16 CFR 1110, against the children's-product rules (lead and phthalate limits, small-parts, the relevant ASTM toy or durable-infant-product standard, tracking labels). It is more testing, more cost and more lead time. The two certificates carry the same legal weight; the difference is who is allowed to do the testing behind them.
The mistake that costs you a container
The expensive error is treating a child-marketed chair as general-use and shipping it on a GCC. If CPSC or a retailer's compliance desk decides the product is a children's product, the GCC is the wrong document and the goods can be held. The reverse error — paying for full third-party CPC testing on an adult leisure rocker that only needed a GCC — burns money you did not have to spend. So the first question we ask on any rocker or glider program is blunt: who is the marketed user? That single answer sets the whole certification path.
The 2026 change to plan for
Here is the deadline. CPSC is moving certificate data into electronic filing: from 8 July 2026, CPC and GCC information has to be filed electronically into the ACE system at import for products in scope. Practically, that means the certificate cannot be an afterthought slipped into the paperwork at the last minute — the data has to exist and be filable when the goods arrive. If you are placing orders that land after that date, build the certificate work into the production schedule now, not at booking.
How we support it
We do not issue your certificate — the importer of record does — but we make it possible to issue a true one. We build to the BIFMA, EN and ASTM methods your product needs, supply the bill of materials and component test data, and arrange third-party testing per order where a CPC requires it. For the products themselves, see our office chairs, rocking chairs and outdoor leisure chairs. If you are running a retail program, the related read is our note on social-audit requirements.
Tell us the product, the market and whether the end user is an adult or a child through our contact form or at mail@ajdk.net, and our OEM programme will map the certification path before you place the order.