Mattel Accepts Blame
PaPaPeng
Mattel apologizes to China, pledging to take responsibility for
defective toys
September 21, 2007
http://english.people.com.cn/90001/90778/6268472.html
Thomas Debrowski, an executive of Mattel, apologized Friday to a
senior Chinese official for the inconvenience it has caused to Chinese
consumers after recalling millions of China-made toys and pledged to
take responsibility, according to a Xinhua witness.
During his talk with Li Changjiang, head of the General Administration
of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine, Debrowski admitted
that the vast majority of its recalled toys were of design flaws
rather than the manufacturing errors of China.
According to a press release announced by a lawyer of the Mattel, 17.4
million toys have been recalled because of loose magnets and those
recalled because of impermissible levels of lead numbered 2.2
millions.
The magnets related recalls were due to emerging issues concerning
design and this has nothing to do with whether the toys were
manufactured in China, said the press release.
"Mattel does not require Chinese manufacturers to be responsible for
the magnets related recalls due to design problems," it said.
It also admitted that Mattel's lead-related recalls were "overly
inclusive" as the company were "committed to applying the highest
standards of safety for its products".
"The follow-up inspections also confirmed that part of the recalled
toys complied with the U.S. standards."
The same high standards to recalls of its products have been applied
in the EU and other countries despite the fact that some of these
products may have met local safety standards. its said.
Source: Xinhua
James
> Mattel apologizes to China, pledging to take responsibility for
> defective toys
Oh so I guess that the fact that Mattel may have made some errors (or
was co-erced by the ever so friendly Chinese Government into saying
they had) absolves Chinese manufacturers from using lead paint,
something that has been outlawed for decades. There is NO EXCUSE for
lead in paint, and Mattel is not the only company who has discovered
this.
James
PaPaPeng
>
>Oh so I guess that the fact that Mattel may have made some errors (or
>was co-erced by the ever so friendly Chinese Government into saying
>they had) absolves Chinese manufacturers from using lead paint,
>something that has been outlawed for decades. There is NO EXCUSE for
>lead in paint, and Mattel is not the only company who has discovered
>this.
>
>James
So in your book the coercive Chinese Government convinced
Mattel's CEO to eat crow? That's impressive. Award yourself a two
crow dinner. I'll even pay fot it.
PaPaPeng
>Oh so I guess that the fact that Mattel may have made some errors (or
>was co-erced by the ever so friendly Chinese Government into saying
>they had) absolves Chinese manufacturers from using lead paint,
More crow.
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2007/09/21/financial/f033549D48.DTL&tsp=1
By ALEXA OLESEN, Associated Press Writer
Friday, September 21, 2007
(09-21) 08:59 PDT BEIJING, China (AP) --
U.S.-based toy giant Mattel Inc. issued an extraordinary apology to
China on Friday over the recall of Chinese-made toys, taking the blame
for design flaws and saying it had recalled more lead-tainted toys
than justified.
The gesture by Thomas A. Debrowski, Mattel's executive vice president
for worldwide operations, came in a meeting with Chinese product
safety chief Li Changjiang, at which Li upbraided the company for
maintaining weak safety controls.
"Our reputation has been damaged lately by these recalls," Debrowski
told Li in a meeting at Li's office at which reporters were allowed to
be present.
"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," Debrowski said.
The carefully worded apology, delivered with company lawyers present,
underscores China's central role in Mattel's business. The world's
largest toy maker has been in China for 25 years and about 65 percent
of its products are made in China.
The fence-mending call came ahead of an expected visit to China by
Mattel's chairman and chief executive, Robert A. Eckert. Following the
massive recall, Eckert told U.S. lawmakers he wanted to see Mattel's
mainland inspections first hand.
Mattel ordered three high-profile recalls this summer involving more
than 21 million Chinese-made toys, including Barbie doll accessories
and toy cars because of concerns about lead paint or tiny magnets that
could be swallowed.
The recalls have prompted complaints from China that manufacturers
were being blamed for design faults introduced by Mattel.
On Friday, Debrowski acknowledged that "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."
Lead-tainted toys accounted for only a small percentage of all toys
recalled, he said, adding that: "We understand and appreciate deeply
the issues that this has caused for the reputation of Chinese
manufacturers."
The slew of Chinese-made toys since June by Mattel and other smaller
toy makers has resulted in many parents scouring for U.S.-made label
stamped on playthings at toy stores. That is no easy feat when more
than 80 percent of toys sold in the U.S. are made in China.
Mattel's mea culpa could help reshape the debate surrounding Chinese-
made toys.
In fact, new research from two business professors shows that recalls
due to problems with the U.S. maker's design accounted for the vast
majority - about 76 percent - of the 550 U.S.toy recalls since 1988.
The report, released earlier this month from Paul R. Beamish, an
international business professor at Canada's University of Western
Ontario, and Hari Bapuji, business professor at University of
Manitoba's I.H. Asper School of Business in Winnipeg, Canada, found
that recalls blamed on design problems and manufacturing defects, such
as lead paint or poor craftmanship, both rose in the past two years as
U.S. makers have shifted more of their production to China.
But they noted that, "if shifting manufacturing to China resulted in
poorer quality goods, then the number of toys recalled due to
manufacturing should be greater than the number recalled due to
design," the report said. But that is not the case.
"Nobody gets a free ride on this," said Beamish, arguing that toy
makers' obsession to quickly get new products to market before they
are widely copied has resulted in a lot of cost-cutting and inadequate
testing.
In a statement issued by the company Friday, Mattel said its lead-
related recalls were "overly inclusive, including toys that may not
have had lead in paint in excess of the U.S. standards.
"The follow-up inspections also confirmed that part of the recalled
toys complied with the U.S. standards," the statement said, without
giving specific figures.
The co-owner of the company that supplied the lead-tainted toys to
Mattel, Lee Der Industrial Co. Ltd., committed suicide in August
shortly after the recall was announced.
Li reminded Debrowski that "a large part of your annual profit ...
comes from your factories in China.
"This shows that our cooperation is in the interests of Mattel, and
both parties should value our cooperation. I really hope that Mattel
can learn lessons and gain experience from these incidents," Li said,
adding that Mattel should "improve their control measures."
Li, the head of China's General Administration of Quality Supervision,
Inspection and Quarantine, also expressed his appreciation for
Debrowski's "objective and responsible attitude toward the recent toy
recall."
Chinese food, drugs and other products ranging from toothpaste to
seafood are under intense scrutiny because they have been found to
contain potentially deadly substances.
But China has bristled at what it claims is a campaign to discredit
its reputation as an exporter. It accuses foreign media and others of
playing up its product safety issues as a form of protectionism.
Beijing insists that the vast majority of its exports are safe but has
stepped up inspections of food, drugs and other products in response
to the concerns.
Li told reporters after meeting with Debrowski that the government had
taken swift action against Lee Der, shutting down its operations and
revoking its business license. Four people from the company also face
criminal charges, he said, without giving details.
Since this summer's recalls Mattel has announced plans to upgrade its
safety system by certifying suppliers and increasing the frequency of
random, unannounced inspections. It has fired several manufacturers.
Tests had found that lead levels in paint in recalled toys were as
high as 110,000 parts per million, or nearly 200 times higher than the
accepted safety ceiling of 600 parts per million.
Mattel's shares fell from the mid-$23 level following the first recall
in early August, reaching as low as $20.97 on Sept. 10. They have
since rebounded, and rose 55 cents, or 2.33 percent to $24.11 in
morning trading Friday..
China has become a center for the world's toy-making industry,
exporting $7.5 billion worth of toys last year.
_____
AP Business Writer Anne D'Innocenzio in New York contributed to this
report.
James
Your next post says it all - where Li reminds Mattel where its profits
come from. Lets face it if the the Chinese government tells Mattel
they have to pack up and leave, Mattel might as well just declare
bankruptcy, because even if they find another low cost manufacturing
country, it would take them a long time to set up again, and toys have
a yearly cycle.
So PaPaPeng, chinese government apologist, would you like to give some
lead paint toys to your children? How about eye shadow made in china
with lead in it - would you let your wife wear it? Or how about
toothpaste with deadly antifreeze in it?
About 50 percent of the paint sold in China, India and Malaysia had
lead levels 30 times higher than U.S. regulations. In contrast in
Singapore, which has well-enforced regulations, only 10 percent of
paint samples were above U.S. regulations, the highest being six times
the U.S. limit.
http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/aug2006/2006-08-24-02.asp
http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=56056
China just signed a pact to ban lead in toys this month THIRTY YEARS
after the US banned lead in paints. Do you suggest that no one in
China knew lead was bad? And note the pact was not to send lead
painted toys TO THE US.
I'm not eating crow. I'm not suggesting that Mattel should not have
been checking what they were shipped. But even the Chinese government
is admitting they have a problem when they kill their food safety
head. Add lead and you start to see a pattern.
James
George Grapman
Al Bundy
> On Sep 21, 4:11 pm, PaPaPeng <PaPaP...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>
> So PaPaPeng, chinese government apologist, would you like to give some
> lead paint toys to your children? How about eye shadow made in china
> with lead in it - would you let your wife wear it? Or how about
> toothpaste with deadly antifreeze in it?
>
Like many OTHER non-US citizens, PAPAPENG has somewhat lower
standards of contamination.
Hence, he posts such crap here.
PaPaPeng
wrote:
Look at your trade figures and retail sales figures. Not a single
hiccup and the year end figures will be even higher than any
comparable period before. But then again the subprime crisis may
overtake events, or maybe OJ has a new headline grabber. What you
actually do is a lot more revealing than what you claim to say, you
meaning the general population, not you the hystericals.
<RJ>
>was co-erced by the ever so friendly Chinese Government into saying
>they had) absolves Chinese manufacturers from using lead paint,
>something that has been outlawed for decades. There is NO EXCUSE for
>lead in paint, and Mattel is not the only company who has discovered
>this.
>
>James
Mattel has ALWAYS been at fault !
When you outsource an item,
YOU provide the specs.... ( and possibly the designs too )
and before YOU put your name on the label,
you test the product to verify that it meets spec,
as well as applicable safety issues.
Mattel was blinded by the bucks !.
If they had kept track of the product
as well as they tracked their potential profit,
this wouldn't have happened.
<rj>
Anthony Matonak
> Have any senior executives been fired?
Hey, this is China we're talking about here.
The question is, 'Have any senior executives been executed?'
Anthony
George Grapman
Anthony Matonak
> Anthony Matonak wrote:
>> George Grapman wrote:
>>> Have any senior executives been fired?
>>
>> Hey, this is China we're talking about here.
>> The question is, 'Have any senior executives been executed?'
>>
Perhaps China is willing to let their guns do their talking?
Isn't assassination a valid business practice in the right parts
of the world?
Anthony
Ward Abbott
wrote:
>Mattel has ALWAYS been at fault !
Damn Barbie!
Chloe
news:d839f310ellhfm0u4...@4ax.com...
I'm just surprised it took Mattel so long to figure out that even if they've
made a deal with the devil, they've still made the deal and with so much of
their production coming out of China, a large-scale loss of consumer
confidence will hurt their bottom line as much or more than it will the
Chinese suppliers. The apology seems obviously motivated by a need to crank
out some PR to contain the damage to their bottom line. It's getting a lot
of press; maybe they should get out of the toy business and into the spin
business.
hchi...@hotmail.com
wrote:
Screw Barbie, thousands of women grew up looking at Ken and thinking
that men had no balls.
James
I don't know what the specs looked like - Mattel should QA and China
should know better than to put lead paint in childrens's or frankly
anything. If you think the US banned it 30 years ago, China can't
claim ignorance of the effects of lead.
James
AllEmailDeletedImmediately
"PaPaPeng" <PaPa...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:18p7f39jsg6vdsq14...@4ax.com...
>
>
>
>
> Mattel apologizes to China, pledging to take responsibility for
> defective toys
> September 21, 2007
> http://english.people.com.cn/90001/90778/6268472.html
>
just sucking up to it's major manufacturing country.