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yu888
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Joined: Jan 25, 2003
Posts: 18042
Location: ZhongShanParkArea SH
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 Posted:
Sep 21, 2007 - 09:55 PM |
 
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| Post subject: Mattel apologizes for Design Flaws and blame on China |
Mattel Apologizes to China for Product Recalls
Reuters
BEIJING
BEIJING - A senior Mattel executive apologized to China on Friday for recent recalls of Chinese-made toys and said it took full responsibility.
Mattel, the world's largest toy maker, has come under scrutiny following the recall of about 21 million of its Chinese-made toys in a span of five weeks, many because of excessive levels of lead paint.
"Our reputation has been damaged lately by these recalls," Thomas Debrowski, Mattel's executive vice president of worldwide operations, told China's quality watchdog chief, Li Changjiang.
"Mattel takes full responsibility for these recalls and apologizes personally to you, the Chinese people and all of our customers who received the toys."
He said he realized the damage that had been done to the reputation of Chinese goods.
"But it's important for everyone to understand that the vast majority of those products that we recalled were the result of a design flaw in Mattel's design, not through a manufacturing flaw in Chinese manufacturers."
Before the Mattel recalls, a spate of incidents involving unsafe Chinese products ranging from toys and seafood to toothpaste that entered both EU and U.S. markets prompted calls on both sides of the Atlantic for a ban on products "made in China."
Mattel CEO Robert Eckert this week defended his company's toy safety record as two skeptical Democratic lawmakers accused him of stonewalling a congressional probe into production practices in China linked to millions of recalled toys.
Eckert told a House Energy and Commerce subcommittee that his company was aggressively testing toys to make sure they were safe, and said employees will make more surprise inspections of factories. |
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hc
Post Roaster
Joined: Apr 04, 2007
Posts: 4545
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Sep 21, 2007 - 11:24 PM |
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Magnolia
Board Biatch
Joined: June 01, 2004
Posts: 31083
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Sep 22, 2007 - 09:39 AM |
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Was discussing last week the fact that Mattel's PR division did an excellent job in diverting blame. |
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yu888
Board Deity
Joined: Jan 25, 2003
Posts: 18042
Location: ZhongShanParkArea SH
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Sep 22, 2007 - 10:21 AM |
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Well considering based on recent reports, 65% of mattel's profits originates from products made in China, it would seem that this apology was inevitable as the bean counters figured out the costs versus benefits... |
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CoffeeHawk_0
Board Buddha
Joined: July 14, 2005
Posts: 14444
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Sep 22, 2007 - 10:38 AM |
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"A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on."
- Sir Winston Churchill |
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hc
Post Roaster
Joined: Apr 04, 2007
Posts: 4545
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Sep 22, 2007 - 06:38 PM |
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Adnimistrator
Rocker
Joined: July 20, 2007
Posts: 788
Status: Offline
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Sep 22, 2007 - 07:01 PM |
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When I saw this appology first time today what immediately came to my mind was "Hehe China must have squeezed Mattel's balls a lot"  |
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hc
Post Roaster
Joined: Apr 04, 2007
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Sep 23, 2007 - 12:55 PM |
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Mattel Takes the Blame for Toy Recalls
Recent toy industry recalls have less to do with shoddy overseas manufacturing than with design issues in the U.S.
by Christopher Palmeri
BW Exclusives
* Surprise: 'Toxic' Mortgages Are the Best
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Veteran character actor Harry Shearer has a regular feature called the "Apology of Week" on a Los Angeles radio show he hosts. Toy giant Mattel (MAT) has been hosting its own version lately, the Apology of the Day.
No sooner had Chief Executive Robert Eckert finished expressing contrition at congressional hearings (BusinessWeek.com, 9/13/07) Sept. 12 and 19 regarding lead paint in toys, that word came of another Mattel mea culpa. The company's executive vice-president of worldwide operations, Thomas Debrowski, expressed remorse to Li Changjiang, the head of China's quality control agency, for the recent spate of product recalls (BusinessWeek.com, 9/5/07). "Mattel takes full responsibility for these recalls and apologizes personally to you, the Chinese people, and all of our customers who received the toys," Debrowski said, according to media reports from China.
Mattel's latest public penitence reveals a fact largely overlooked in the swirling controversy over toy industry recalls: Most of them don't have to do with shoddy overseas manufacturing. The majority involve products that were just designed poorly to begin with (BusinessWeek.com, 8/14/07), most likely right in the U.S.
Placing Blame
The finger-pointing at China began earlier this year with a wave of news about tainted pet food, toothpaste, and tires manufactured there. More stories followed about toys made with hazardous lead paint. Mattel announced three major recalls, involving some 20 million items. The company said a number of toy cars and Barbie-related accessories had been colored with lead paint, a violation of company procedures. The contractors involved were dismissed, and Mattel significantly stepped up its pre- and post-manufacturing inspections.
But, as the El Segundo (Calif.) company freely admits, most of the recalled items—17.4 million—had nothing to do with lead paint. Instead, they were manufactured with a new generation of high-powered magnets that if swallowed by children could cause serious injury or death. (The recalled toys with lead paint numbered 2.2 million.) Mattel was hardly the only company caught up in the magnet issue. A child's death prompted a major recall of Rose Art Industries' Magnetix building sets in March, 2006.
Design Failures
Many other toy recalls have also been design-related. In February, Hasbro (HAS) recalled nearly 1 million Easy-Bake Ovens when it was discovered that children could easily get caught in them and burned. The recalls continue. On Sept. 21, the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission announced the recall of 1 million cribs made by Simplicity of Reading, Pa. If assembled improperly, one side of the crib can detach and suffocate children. The cribs have been linked to three deaths and seven "infant entrapments," according to Simplicity's Web site.
In a study released at the end of August two professors from the University of Manitoba noted that of the 550 toy recalls that have occurred since 1988, 76% of them were due to design-related problems. Only about 10% were directly attributed to manufacturing defects. The percentage of defective toys manufactured in China has been rising, but so has the percentage of overall Chinese-made toys. Indeed, the percentage of recalled toys made in China last year—80%—mirrors the percentage of all toys built there.
"It would be far too easy to attribute this summer's recalls to China's poorly regulated export manufacturers," Representative John Dingell (D-Mich.) said as the latest hearings began on Sept. 19. "Regulatory deficiencies, shoddy business practices, and the forces of globalization all play a substantial role in this catastrophe. There is enough blame to go around."
Hari Bapuji, one of the two Canadian business-school professors who conducted the recent recall study, says the problem of unsafe toys won't be solved simply by stepped-up inspections. Toy manufacturers will have to do a far better job designing the toys from the start. Bapuji thinks the industry is getting the message though. "In the short run there is a problem," he says. "In the long run they will come out of this stronger."
Hahah. Shamelss scum.
Looks like they used the lead paint thing as a smoke screen to get rid of the bigger more serious problem. |
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yu888
Board Deity
Joined: Jan 25, 2003
Posts: 18042
Location: ZhongShanParkArea SH
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Sep 24, 2007 - 11:56 AM |
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Friday, Sep. 21, 2007
Why Mattel Apologized to China
By Jyoti Thottam
So are toys from China safe or not? If you think you're confused, it looks as if even Mattel, the largest toymaker in the United States, doesn't know.
On Friday, Mattel's executive vice president for worldwide operations, Thomas Debrowski, met with the Chinese product safety chief Li Changjiang, to apologize for the company's own weak safety controls. "Our reputation has been damaged lately by these recalls," Mr. Debrowski told Li. "And Mattel takes full responsibility for these recalls and apologizes personally to you, the Chinese people, and all of our customers who received the toys."
It's a stunning reversal. In August, after the company announced its recalls of several toys because they were made using lead paint, reporters grilled Mattel CEO Bob Eckert about how lead paint, which is banned for use on children's toys in the U.S., ended up on its "Sarge" toy cars. Surprisingly, he had answers. In a conference call on Aug. 14, he blamed it on a subcontractor who violated Mattel's policies and "utilized paint from a non-authorized third-party supplier."
That moment of candor and Eckert's heartfelt apology to parents in a video the company released on Mattel's website were high points in Mattel's otherwise punch-drunk performance in handling these recalls. By pointing out specifically where things broke down and then spelling out what he would do to fix it — testing every batch of toys before it leaves China, rather than relying on testing raw materials — the CEO reassured American consumers that he understood the problem and would back up his apology with action.
Eckert is now paying the price for his candor. Mattel needs China just as much as China needs Mattel, and it cannot afford to jeopardize its relationship with the country that produces 65% of its toys. In a global public relations campaign, Chinese officials have emphasized that the country does have strong safety standards, and that problems at a few companies shouldn't be used to paint the whole country's products as unsafe. Even well-regarded Chinese companies with no link to toys or any hint of safety problems, such as brewer Tsingtao and appliance maker Haier, could suffer in the backlash against the made in China label.
So Mattel found a face-saving way of taking back the blame that it had previously placed so squarely on its Chinese partners, the source of all the toys it recalled this year. The "vast majority of those products that were recalled were the result of a design flaw in Mattel's design, not through a manufacturing flaw in China's manufacturers," Debrowski said. "We understand and appreciate deeply the issues that this has caused for the reputation of Chinese manufacturers.�
Technically, Mattel's analysis is correct. Of the 19.6 million toys that it has recalled this year globally, 2.2 million were due to lead paint; the remaining 17.4 million (11.7 million in the U.S.) were toys recalled not because of lead paint but because they were made with super-strong magnets. If they come loose and are swallowed in multiples, those magnets can come together with force enough to tear through the intestines of a young child. (Mattel's announcement noted three such serious injuries that required surgery.) The magnet recall was unusually large because it includes toys sold as far back as 2002, before Mattel changed its design to encase the magnets in plastic to make them more secure.
Perhaps it was convenient for Mattel to issue the magnet recall at the same time as its much smaller lead-paint recalls. Or perhaps the company was using an abundance of caution in recalling any toy that might pose a potential hazard. Either way, lead paint in toys from China is not an issue Mattel can correct overnight. That isn't a happy situation for anyone, from families in the U.S. to workers in Chinese factories who face a daily risk of lead poisoning. It will take much more than yet another apology from Mattel to fix that.
* http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1664428,00.html |
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Magnolia
Board Biatch
Joined: June 01, 2004
Posts: 31083
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Sep 24, 2007 - 12:06 PM |
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while it may not be the proper thread to ask...
does any of the blame lie with purchasers who demanded and cheapest of the cheap? have we come to a point where parents may be willing to pay more quaility-ensured items? usually i would say yes, but find the constant nbarrangement of particular touys, "must-have" toys and the constatnt exposure to the toys are commericalis. Since the job is sell toys, blame can't be found with that. But at the end of the day, (American, especially) parents tend to overdose the kids in toys and in doing so, blindly trust the manufactueres of the cheapest toys. |
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Magnolia
Board Biatch
Joined: June 01, 2004
Posts: 31083
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Sep 24, 2007 - 12:13 PM |
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note... i am not saying the parent went out their way to purcahse toys the may be less than safe rather that they went for populairzes toys that target kids using many forms of media; was the trest in a company based on the size of the company which built its' name on inexpensive items? did they "trust" because the goverment said the company/toys were okay? does that remove any of the blame? |
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yu888
Board Deity
Joined: Jan 25, 2003
Posts: 18042
Location: ZhongShanParkArea SH
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Sep 24, 2007 - 03:04 PM |
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technically everyone should share in the blame as ultimately many parents are trusting profit driving people and organizations to dictate what toys to get their kids. ironically, as a new parent, i am finding Babyyu's favorite toys so are are the simple things like newspaper, carrefour catalogues (he seems to like the mobile phone section and the produce section best) and the mini nestle and Evian Water bottles (empty) as they make noise when bitten or squeezed and have a handle neck to hold on to. So much for thousand of dollars of Fischer Price toys eh? |
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dfoo
Post Roaster
Joined: Jan 19, 2005
Posts: 4140
Status: Offline
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Sep 24, 2007 - 03:32 PM |
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You have to wait a couple of years until you start hearing the "I want that, I want that!" screams  |
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yu888
Board Deity
Joined: Jan 25, 2003
Posts: 18042
Location: ZhongShanParkArea SH
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Sep 25, 2007 - 03:14 PM |
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| dfoo wrote: |
| You have to wait a couple of years until you start hearing the "I want that, I want that!" screams |
you mean screams from someone other than me? |
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bougie
Board Buddha
Joined: Nov 20, 2004
Posts: 13323
Location: Wuhan Hubei China
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Sep 25, 2007 - 08:52 PM |
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Many designers don't know squat about mfg'ing. DFM hahahaha |
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yu888
Board Deity
Joined: Jan 25, 2003
Posts: 18042
Location: ZhongShanParkArea SH
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Sep 26, 2007 - 10:56 AM |
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hc
Post Roaster
Joined: Apr 04, 2007
Posts: 4545
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Sep 26, 2007 - 02:44 PM |
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