Product Labelling in Online Shops: Implementing PAngV, Textile and LMIV Rules Correctly

Anyone who sells goods by weight, volume or length in their online shop, offers textiles or lists food must display product-specific mandatory information – and already on the product page, not only in the shopping cart or on the invoice.

In short: The German Price Indication Ordinance (Preisangabenverordnung, PAngV), the German Textile Labelling Act (Textilkennzeichnungsgesetz) and the EU Food Information Regulation (Lebensmittel-Informationsverordnung, LMIV) require online retailers, depending on the type of product, to state unit prices, to name the fibre composition and to provide mandatory and allergen information. All shops with the relevant ranges are affected, regardless of company size. If information is missing, fines and competition-law warning letters from competitors are looming.

Who is affected?

The labelling obligations apply to every online shop whose range includes at least one of the three product groups: goods sold by quantity, textiles or food. This affects not only classic food retailers, but also drugstore, cosmetics, cleaning product and fashion shops – as soon as a product is sold by weight, volume, length or area, or contains fibres or food ingredients, the respective obligation applies. This applies regardless of whether you sell through your own shop, a marketplace or social commerce channels – only the product is decisive, not the sales channel. A shop with a mixed range can well be subject to several sets of rules at the same time, for example if it carries both loose-sold cosmetics and clothing. Which of these obligations apply to your company in concrete terms is shown by a tool such as Company Audit.

Which information applies to which product?

The three sets of rules interlock depending on the product. The following overview shows which mandatory information applies to which product group:

What do you need to do in concrete terms?

Ideally, implementation follows this sequence:

1. Check the range for product groups subject to labelling (goods sold by quantity, textiles, food).
2. Display unit prices (e.g. €/kg, €/l) correctly next to the sales price.
3. State the fibre composition for textiles.
4. For food, present mandatory information and allergens before the purchase is completed.
5. Keep the labelling up to date when the range changes.

The order matters here: first the range check, then the technical implementation in the shop system, finally ongoing maintenance. Anyone who lists new products should anchor labelling as a fixed part of the product creation process, rather than adding it afterwards. In practice it pays to assign responsibility for the individual steps clearly: who checks new items before they go live, who maintains the unit price fields in the shop system, and who checks existing product pages for completeness at regular intervals? Without such a fixed process, labelling errors tend, in our experience, to creep in precisely when the range grows or products change frequently.

By when / how often?

There is no one-off deadline – correct labelling is a permanent obligation. The information must be visible before the purchase is completed, so at the latest on the product page or in the shopping cart before the order is placed. As soon as the range changes – new products, changed recipes, different material compositions – the labelling must be checked again and adjusted where necessary. There is no fixed repetition period in the sense of an annual or quarterly check; the only thing that matters is that the information is correct at the moment of purchase.

What is the penalty for a violation?

Violations of the PAngV, TextilKennzG or LMIV lead to fines and to competition-law warning letters from competitors. Unit price errors are particularly often affected and are among the most common warning letters in online retail. Anyone who presents information incompletely or incorrectly therefore risks both a fine and additional costs from a competition-law dispute. Since labelling errors on product pages are easy to spot and therefore easy to check, they often attract attention quickly in practice – from competitors as well as consumer protection bodies.

What should you pay particular attention to?

Two sources of error cause the most problems in practice:

• Unit price errors are among the most common warning letters in online retail – the automatic unit price calculation in the shop system should therefore be spot-checked regularly, especially after changes to prices, quantities or packaging, since errors in these fields often creep in unnoticed.
• For food, the mandatory information must already be on the product page, not only in the shopping cart – anyone who displays this information only late in the ordering process or only links it as a file violates the LMIV and risks the same consequences as with missing information.

Frequently asked questions

Does the unit price obligation also apply to small shops?

Yes. The Price Indication Ordinance makes no distinction by company size – every shop that sells goods by quantity must display the unit price.

Is it enough to show the fibre composition only in the product image?

No. The fibre composition must appear as readable text in the product description, so that it can be reliably found before purchase and is not only recognisable in an image.

Do allergens have to be on the product page already?

Yes. For food, the LMIV requires that mandatory and allergen information be visible already on the product page – not only in the shopping cart or on the invoice.

How often does the labelling need to be updated?

Whenever the range changes – for example with new products, changed recipes or different material compositions. There is no fixed repetition period, but there is an obligation to keep the information up to date on an ongoing basis.

What is the most common source of error in online retail?

Unit price errors. They are among the most common warning letters in online retail and often result from an incorrect automatic calculation in the shop system, for example with special offers or quantity discounts.

Source: PAngV · TextilKennzG · LMIV. This article is general information and does not replace legal advice in an individual case. As of: July 2026.