Mattel 's Effect On Toys

In 2007, Mattel a California based toy company shockingly recalled 19 million toys that had been manufactured in China. Mattel was founded in 1944, and has produced iconic toys such as Barbie and Hot Wheels. The company had a long established trust with their consumers that had been forged from decades of reliability. However, when the company recalled 19 million toys due to health and safety violations, consumer confusion and outrage soared. The public wanted to know how such an established company’s safety regulations could fail, how Mattel was addressing the issue, and whether consumers could trust Mattel to produce reliable toys in the future.

recalls related to product quality problems. Observers felt the company would have lost even more

The problem surrounding Mattel Inc. is their mismanagement of international subcontractors and vendors and the production of certain toys (the manufacturing process), as well as their inability to adapt their marketing strategy or product to the constantly changing “demographic and socioeconomic trends.” This is supported by Mattel’s legal battle with Carter Bryant and MGA, their forced recall of certain toys that were manufactured overseas, and the increasing rate at which traditional toys are becoming less appealing to today’s young audience. Essentially, Mattel’s mismanagement and oversight lead to violations in terms of ethical and social responsibilities and safety standards.

The biggest environment force affected Mattel recently has been legal and regulatory with the high levels of lead paint found in their die-cast toys in 2007. This issue created a voluntary recall from Mattel for over 2 million toys and created doubt in customers to the quality of their Mattel toys. Mattel responded by immediately implementing a check system to accept paint only from certified suppliers, tightened controls throughout the production process and testing every production run to ensure compliance. Mattel said that it is working in cooperation with the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission and other regulatory agencies worldwide. Mattel is also working with retailers worldwide to identify and remove affected products from retail shelves.

Mattel is starting to take a step in the right direction, according to Renae Merle from The Washington Post, “Mattel said it was strengthening its process for preventing the use of lead based paint, it will only permit paint from certified suppliers and require every batch to be tested, company officials said” (Merle 1). 80% of toys in the United States are imported from China, according to Renae Merle, and 65% of those toys are created by Mattel. Although that is a step in the right direction, that still leaves 15% of the toys in the United States at a higher risk of having high traces of lead on them, going undetected. Stores like Toys ‘R’ Us that sell toys sold by companies other than Mattel, should be required to post the percentage of how much lead is in each toy directly next to or near the toy so that parents can be aware of this problem. If parents are not made aware of this problem, it is going to cause more concerns health wise. Michelle Albert, a stay at home mom of two children states that “I feel our country should be more careful about the things we import” (Albert 1). She fears that her children may have been exposed to these toys and has no way of knowing until it may be too late.

The company stated that it intends to eventually build all aircraft models in China, saying "The agreements together pave the way for a range of business jets, utility single-engine turboprops and single-engine piston aircraft to be manufactured and certified in China."[3][4]

ToyWorld, Inc. was founded in 1973 by David Dunton. Before that, he had been employed as production manager by a large manufacturer of plastic toys. Mr. Dunton and his former assistant, Jack McClintock, established Toy World, Inc. with their savings in 1973. Originally a partnership, the firm was incorporated in1974, with Mr. Dunton taking 75% of the capital stock and Mr. McClintock taking 25%. The latter served as production manager, and Mr. Dunton, as president, was responsible for overall direction of the company’s affairs. After a series of illnesses, Mr. Dunton’s health deteriorated, and he was forced

4. As I mentioned above Mattel needs to determine if they want to have their products produced by producers in China or producers in the United States. They need to investigate into this problem and see which producer has the lowest recall rate and which producers seem to produce the highest quality products. They should re-evaluate the design of their product to see if there are any flaws involved with the overall design that are causing products to be harmful to children. Mattel should also do some research about international countries’ economies, unemployment rates, and how high the demand for toys is before selling their products internationally.

On April 1st, 2014 in Washington D.C., General Motors (GM) Chief Executive Officer Mary Barra testified in front of a panel of senators regarding the company’s late delay in addressing a defect in ignition switches, causing cars to lose power and injuring or killing the drivers. While GM has issued a recall on cars that are known to have this defective product, the problem lies in the delay of action on the part of GM, who are accused of knowing about the defect as early as 2001.

Amazon and Mattel both as companies with specific strategies for specific industries. Amazon entered the business world as bookseller and Mattel entered the business worlds as a toy provider. Mattel made specific toy brands for itself such as Barbie, Matchbox Cars, Fischer Price and Magna Doodle. These brands help solidify Mattel as a legitimate and dominant toy company in the business market. Amazon started as web-based Retail Company. After becoming the world’s largest bookstore Amazon went on to add profitable online business ventures to its portfolio such as offering online music, electronics, becoming a videos store, and toys. Amazon sales dominance in the online retail world boosted the company to the corporate giant that it is today.

There are many barriers to new organizations in the toy industry, making the threat of new entrants low. Lego and other big toy companies like Mattel benefit from economies of scale. An economy of scale is achieved by lower costs through large volume production (Textbook glossary). Economies of scale can occur in many departments within the organization including production, marketing, research and development, and finance. Some manufacturing of Lego products was shifted to Central Europe and Mexico in order to benefit from lower wages and to shorten product supply chains (p. 13 of case). The management of Lego additionally holds expertise on production, distribution and customer needs; which are absent in a new organization. To enter the toy sector a potential entrant needs to calculate the start of production at a level that will give a competitive position and production costs lower than the market.

This paper researched the fact that the Toys “R” Us Company was displaying a weakness in financial related issues due to the lack of proper strategic planning. This made the company susceptible to many threats in the industry’s competitive environment. The research has shown that its main competitors Walmart, Target, and Amazon are functioning successfully in the industry while Toys R Us heads for bankruptcy. This research emphasizes the fact that Toys R Us has not taken steps to strategize its operations properly which resulted in a loss of revenue and opportunities in their environment. If the company does not take steps to better its strategic planning, the company will not

In 2007, the international toy manufacturer, Mattel, Inc. issued several recalls for millions of their products. These recalls were for safety reasons in that testing at the manufacturing sites and special test laboratories showed that millions of their toys were coated with dangerous amounts of lead in the paint. This lead based paint contains a potent neurotoxin that if ingested can cause serious harm to children. Mattel assured the public that the problem would be solved, the recalled products would be collected and replaced, and that the company would never let this type of incident happen again.

As we can see Mattel does a pretty good job of of managing risk within its own business. However, it is some of these large multi national companies that often overlook managing corporate integrity risk in there supply networks. Companies have inserted clauses into their standard contracts with suppliers requiring them to comply with the rules and regulations applicable and materials used must exactly that which has been stated in the contract.

Clearly  Mattel  did  not  have  sufficiently  tight  quality  control   procedures  in  its  supply  chain  to  compensate  for  the  extra   risks  of  outsourcing  to  relatively  new  Chinese   subcontractors.  Clearly  there  were  design  flaws  in  the  toys   with  the  magnets  that  could  come  loose.   But  Mattel  deserves  praise  for  now  stepping  up  to  its   responsibilities  as  the  leading  brand  in  the  toy  industry.   -­‐What  has  Mattel  done!  :