Paying for cheap play | ANALYSIS | Keeping toy prices down has had its costs
August 19, 2007
BY RACHEL BECK
suntimes.com
The first Barbie dolls to hit the market in 1959 cost $3 each. Today, the fashion doll won't set you back much more.
That's the economics of the toy business. Consumers demand low prices. Toymakers want fat profits. So manufacturing ambled off to China, which for a long time has been willing and able to please both.
Now a massive toy recall by Mattel Inc. reveals an ugly side to that cost-cutting drive. The sacrifice of safety just to provide cheap toys is something everyone will have to pay for.
This Barbie doll and Tanner play set from Mattel includes a
magnet that a child could swallow. It's among the 9 million
Chinese-made toys recalled last week. (AP)
Now a massive toy recall by Mattel Inc. reveals an ugly side to that cost-cutting drive. The sacrifice of safety just to provide cheap toys is something everyone will have to pay for.
The slogan 'Made in China' has long stood for affordability. Thanks to the dramatically lower labor costs that China offered -- estimated by some to be a fifth of what they are globally -- toymakers could knock down their expenses by shifting production abroad.
That not only has boosted corporate earnings, but helped them gain shelf-space in retail chains like Wal-Mart Stores Inc. that insisted on low prices for the products they bought. The merchants could then offer good deals to price-conscious shoppers without losing any prof-its.
The result is an industry that hasn't seen its products' prices soar much. Many of today's toys, when adjusted for inflation, might be less expensive than those decades ago, even though such things as raw material costs -- like paper and plastic -- have skyrocketed, according to independent toy industry consultant Chris Byrne.
'We can't have ever-decreasing prices without something eventually being squeezed,' Byrne said.
That squeeze is what has been grabbing headlines lately. As millions of Chinese-made toys have been recalled, suddenly Americans have become very aware -- and scared -- of the risks of manufacturing there.
It's easy to see why the alarm bells are going off. When playthings with big-time brand names are considered health risks, that makes for much conversation among parents who are now dismayed about what's lurking in their toy bin.
This puts the toy industry in a tricky spot. With more than 80 percent of U.S. toys imported from China, toymakers here can't afford to abandon production. But if they want to keep customers, toy sellers must change their Chinese operations significantly.
Mattel Inc. and others are facing that new reality right now. This summer has been tough for the world's largest toymaker, which has seen its reputation as a leader in manufacturing safety unravel after two highly publicized recalls in just as many weeks.
In June, Oak Brook-based RC2 Corp. recalled 1.5 million items from its Thomas & Friends Wooden Railway toy line.
On Aug. 2, Mattel's Fisher-Price division recalled 83 types of toys -- including the popular Big Bird, Elmo, Dora and Diego characters -- because their paint contains excessive amounts of lead. Then on Tuesday, lead paint also led to the recall of hundreds of thousands of die cast cars.
In total, El Segundo, Calif.-based Mattel has recalled almost 2 million toys worldwide because of lead paint concerns, plus millions more for other safety reasons.
Mattel has said it will take a $30 million charge to cover the cost of the recalls, but that doesn't include what it will spend to convince the public that its toys are safe. Analysts estimate that millions of dollars more will have to go toward monitoring its foreign vendors and creating a marketing program that assuages parents' concerns.
Mattel has already said that it will switch from randomly testing finished toys to testing every batch of toys produced. It will also step up safety checks at the suppliers and subcontractors before they finish making the toy.
While Mattel has become the poster-child of Chinese manufacturing gone wrong, its rivals should be scrambling to avoid being caught in a similar spot. That doesn't mean just keeping better tabs on the manufacturers that they have direct contact with, but looking at every vendor, the vendor's vendor, and so on.
'The transparency at the back end of these operations is hazy,' said Eric Johnson, professor of operations management at Dartmouth's Tuck School of Business who has studied Chinese manufacturing. 'Each layer becomes harder to manage and control.'
He sees how the situation at toymakers could have played out. With everyone up and down the supply chain so pressed to cut costs, factories that used to rely on brand-name paint found cheaper no-name options from local suppliers. And as those suppliers continually race to offer the cheapest alternative, lead paint lands on toys.
It's pretty clear right now that doing business in China just got more expensive. It can't stay the Wild West of manufacturing that it has become.
AP
Copyright 2007 Associated Press. All rights reserved. |
