If you've ordered one of my welding caps from Germany, France, Italy, or another European Union country in the past, you may notice that your country is no longer available as a shipping destination.
Unfortunately, I've had to discontinue shipping to countries within the European Union.
Why the change?
New EU packaging regulations have changed the requirements for businesses outside the EU that ship packaged products directly to customers there. These requirements include packaging registration, recycling programs, reporting, and other compliance obligations that can apply even when a business sends only a handful of packages into a country each year.
High Desert Welding Hats is a very small, owner-operated business. I make your caps here in Oregon, one order at a time, and historically I have only shipped a few orders to EU countries each year.
That's where the numbers simply stop making sense.
The annual cost and administrative requirements of maintaining compliance in the countries I occasionally ship to would be significantly out of proportion to the number of orders I receive from those countries.
I considered whether changing packaging materials or using more environmentally friendly packaging would solve the problem. Unfortunately, it doesn't. While packaging materials can affect some recycling fees, they don't eliminate the registration, reporting, and other compliance requirements involved.
Why not just charge more?
Technically, I could try to recover those costs through higher prices or additional fees for EU customers.
I don't think that's a reasonable solution.
A customer in Germany, France, or Italy is already paying substantial international shipping to order a handmade welding cap from a small business in Oregon. Adding another large expense to cover annual regulatory costs for only a few orders isn't something I am comfortable doing.
So I've chosen the simpler option: I will no longer accept orders shipping to EU destinations.
International shipping isn't going away
I am not discontinuing international shipping altogether.
Shipping remains available to supported countries outside the European Union, including Canada and Australia. The countries currently available for shipping will appear during checkout.
I'm genuinely grateful to the customers in Germany, France, Italy, and elsewhere in Europe who have ordered my caps over the years. It has always been pretty remarkable to package up a welding cap I made here in Oregon and send it halfway around the world.
I wish I could continue doing it.
For now, though, this is one of those decisions where being a very small business matters. I'd rather be upfront about why I've made the change than quietly remove countries from checkout and leave people wondering what happened.
— RoxAnne
High Desert Welding Hats
