The testing is finished, the reports are approved, and then the documentation question arrives: who puts their name on the Declaration of Conformity? The factory offers to send "their DoC". Your own draft carries your brand. An importer in Europe says neither is right and the document has to name them. All three can sound plausible, and picking the wrong one is not punished immediately - it surfaces months later, at customs, in a marketplace audit, or when a market surveillance authority asks who is responsible for the product.
The answer does not depend on how the negotiation goes. It follows from one definition, and it is worth writing down precisely before anything is signed.
The short answer
The Declaration of Conformity is signed by the manufacturer - and under EU law, "manufacturer" is not the workshop. The standard definition used across the New Legislative Framework directives (Decision 768/2008/EC, Annex I, model provision R(2)) describes the manufacturer as the natural or legal person who manufactures the product or has it designed or manufactured, and markets it under their own name or trademark. If you take an ODM's product and put your brand on it, you are the manufacturer - even though you never touched production. The factory that built it is, in that arrangement, not the manufacturer but the producer acting on your behalf. Everything else in this article is a consequence of that one sentence.
Who the "manufacturer" is in four common ODM setups
Because the role follows the name on the product, it can change from one sales channel to the next - with the same hardware.
| Arrangement | Who signs the DoC | Why |
|---|---|---|
| You buy ODM-made units and sell them under your brand | You, the brand | You market the product under your own trademark |
| The factory sells its own branded product to you, and you distribute it unchanged | The factory | It is the one marketing under its own name; you are the importer or distributor |
| A distributor takes your product and rebrands it for their market | The distributor, for the rebranded units | Their name is on the product when it is placed on the market, which makes them the manufacturer for those units |
| You have your own EU entity that sells the product | Your EU entity | Manufacturer is a legal role attached to the entity doing the marketing, wherever it sits |
The practical trap is the mixed case: the factory sells the same platform both under its own brand and as your private-label version. Those are two different products in the legal sense, each needing its own accurately written DoC. Neither document can serve both channels, because each one describes who placed a specific product on the market.
The signature itself: entity first, person second
A DoC is issued in the name of a legal entity - company name, address, contact details - together with the product identification, the directives and standards applied, a statement of conformity, and a dated signature. The person signing is whoever is authorised to sign for that entity: a director, a compliance manager, a founder. There is no statutory job title, and an individual signing "in a personal capacity" does not move the obligation away from the named company.
What the signature commits you to is worth reading before signing rather than after. The manufacturer keeps the technical documentation available for ten years after the product is placed on the market (Article 7(3) of the EMC Directive 2014/30/EU, and equivalent provisions in the other directives), responds to market surveillance requests, and ensures that series production continues to match the tested sample. That is why a supplier who "signs on your behalf" and then disappears leaves you holding a document nobody stands behind. The technical file obligation follows the same entity.
The two-DoC problem
The most common version of this question arrives as a request: "Ask the factory to issue the DoC with our model number on it." It sounds efficient and it produces a wrong document. A DoC issued in the factory's name, listing your model number and your company as the party placing the product on the market, describes something the factory did not do - the factory is not marketing your branded units. The direction is reversed:
- The factory issues a DoC for its own branded product. That document belongs to the factory's own sales channel and is not evidence for your units.
- You issue a DoC in your own name for your branded units, and the test report - issued for the same hardware and configuration - is the evidence behind your declaration. The reports stay in the factory's name; the declaration does not.
Both documents can legitimately exist side by side. What cannot exist is a DoC whose issuer does not match the name on the product.
Authorised representatives and EU responsible persons - do not confuse them
Three roles get mixed up in ODM deals, and each answers a different question.
The authorised representative (AR) is appointed by written mandate to carry out specified tasks on the manufacturer's behalf. An AR may draw up the Declaration of Conformity only where the mandate explicitly empowers it to do so - otherwise the signature stays with the manufacturer. If a UK or German consultancy holds your AR appointment, check what the mandate actually says before letting them sign anything.
The economic operator established in the EU is a separate requirement. Since 16 July 2021, Regulation (EU) 2019/1020 Article 4 requires products covered by the EMC, Low Voltage and Radio Equipment Directives to have a responsible economic operator established in the EU - the manufacturer, an authorised representative, the importer, or a fulfilment provider. For a brand with no EU presence, that is usually the importer or a paid AR service. That entity's name appears in the supply chain and on the product, but it does not become the DoC signatory by being named.
The importer has its own obligations - verifying that a DoC and technical documentation exist, that the CE marking is there, and not placing products on the market where they do not. What an importer cannot do, unless it rebrands the product and becomes the manufacturer, is sign the DoC instead of you. When a German importer offers to "put their name on the declaration because you have no EU company", they are usually offering the wrong thing; the right arrangement is importer or economic operator duties, with your signature staying on the DoC. The same private-labeller logic applies under UKCA.
The FCC version of the same question
For products that go through the Supplier's Declaration of Conformity route - the digital devices without a radio that do not carry an FCC ID - the FCC has its own location rule: the responsible party must be located in the United States (47 CFR 2.909), and since 6 February 2023 it must also have a US agent for service of process (47 CFR 2.911(d)(7)). A Chinese ODM factory cannot be the responsible party for your SDoC. The brand, or your US entity or importer, has to be.
Where the product does carry an FCC ID, the grantee is whoever applied for the authorisation - usually the factory or the module vendor. Your branded units rely on that grant, and putting your trade name on the product follows the change-in-identification rules rather than a new application, which is covered alongside the wider question of reusing a supplier's test report.
Four situations that keep coming up
The factory's DoC arrives with your model number on it
A factory, trying to be helpful, issues a DoC in its own name listing the buyer's model and even the buyer's address as the manufacturer. The intent is good and the document is wrong on both counts. The fix takes one email: the brand issues its own DoC, references the factory's test report number, and asks the factory to keep its own declaration to its own branded product.
A distributor wants to rebrand for a tender
A distributor chasing a public tender asks to put their logo on the housing. Fine - but the moment the product goes to market under their name, they are the manufacturer for those units: their DoC, their technical documentation duty, their market surveillance exposure. Distributors who hear what "manufacturer" obligates them to sometimes decide a co-branded arrangement with your DoC unchanged is the better deal. That conversation should happen before artwork, not after.
Firmware moved on after the documents were written
The factory's report and their supporting paperwork name firmware 1.0.0. The containers ship with 1.2.0, which changed a radio parameter. Now every document in the chain - the reports, the DoC that cites the standards, the technical file - describes a product you do not ship. The declaration itself does not list firmware versions, but the evidence behind it does, and an authority or a buyer comparing the two will find the gap. This is the same configuration-control problem that a frozen, approved test plan is designed to prevent.
Nobody can say who the manufacturer is supposed to be
It happens more often than it should: the ODM agreement is silent on compliance, the brand assumed the factory "handles CE", the factory assumed the buyer "does the paperwork", and the first DoC gets issued by whoever had a template. Nothing in the file then matches the trade flow. Sorting this out after an import stop is an order of magnitude more expensive than sorting it out in the contract.
What the ODM contract should say about it
The DoC signature question is really a contract question decided months earlier. Six clauses prevent nearly all of the situations above:
- Evidence ownership: the factory delivers the complete test reports and supporting data for units sold under your brand - not a summary, and not "results available on request".
- Change notification: any design, component, antenna, adapter or firmware change is notified before shipment, because an unnotified change is what silently makes your DoC inaccurate.
- Scope of the factory's own DoC: limited to the factory's own branded product, with your model numbers explicitly excluded from it.
- Named roles: who is the manufacturer, who appoints the authorised representative or EU economic operator, and whose name and address appear where.
- Technical file access: for as long as you are the manufacturer - up to ten years - you can get the documentation needed to answer an authority.
- Model name and label control: you own the model designation used on the certified configuration, so the identification stays traceable between report, DoC and shipped product.
The conclusion, stated on its own
The Declaration of Conformity is signed by the manufacturer, and in ODM and private-label deals the manufacturer is the company that markets the product under its own name or trademark - not the factory that built it. That follows from the New Legislative Framework definition of manufacturer (Decision 768/2008/EC, Annex I, model provision R(2)), which explicitly covers a person who "has a product designed or manufactured" and markets it under their own brand. An authorised representative may draw up the DoC only under a written mandate that says so; an importer verifies compliance but does not sign it; and under the EU Regulation 2019/1020 Article 4 someone must be established in the EU as the responsible economic operator, which is a different role from the signatory. On the US side, the SDoC responsible party must be located in the United States (47 CFR 2.909, with a service-of-process agent since 6 February 2023 under 2.911(d)(7)), which a Chinese factory cannot be. A DoC issued by the wrong entity is not a formality error - it is a document that names someone who does not carry the obligations, and leaves the party who does carrying no paper.
How this looks from the laboratory side
We are not a party to your ODM agreement, and we do not issue Declarations of Conformity for clients - the DoC is yours to sign as manufacturer. What we see constantly is where the chain breaks: reports issued for a configuration that no longer matches the shipment, a brand name that never made it onto the report's model list, or a DoC citing standards that the tested configuration was never measured against. When we run a project for a private-label product, the report is structured so the evidence maps onto your declaration - your model designation, the exact hardware and firmware tested, and the standard editions you will cite - which is the core of our testing and certification programme. The declaration is one page; it is only as good as the file behind it.
Send us the draft Declaration of Conformity together with the compliance clauses of your ODM agreement - or just a summary of who is named as manufacturer, who supplies the reports, and who covers the EU-side roles. We will check that the signing entity, the cited reports and the tested configuration actually line up, and mark what is missing before an importer, a marketplace or a market surveillance authority finds it first.