Toy production in China

[skunk]

A fairly informative and certainly interesting article about Mattel's efforts to avoid pirating, and to maintain quality and ethics while producing toys in China.

www.nytimes.com/2007/07/26/business/26toy.html?ex=1343188800&en=1da84f065e1c66dd&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink

[stanhas87]

Dear Hakan:

Thank you for this report; I was unaware of most of it, except for the fact that they were the first to produce their toys abroad. Another one for my files.

Alas is stated that Hot Wheels are very hard to fall apart.

Nick K

[BillC]

That's an interesting article, but before you get too crazed about Mattel vs. the other companies, you need to remember a lot of those companies make products for multiple clients who might not be too thrilled about their new products being on display for reporters. The bulk of Ricko's parent company's business, for example, comes from other sources and at least some of those sources require their work be kept confidential. At Masterpiece's tooling facility, it's the same way. Masterpiece's partner enterprise does tooling not just for toy companies, but for electronics and other types of businesses and has to maintain security for those projects.

I can't say much about the working conditions at either Ricko or Masterpiece, though I do know they treat the people who work on the models pretty well because it takes more skilled and experienced workers to do the job right and both companies are always looking to attract additional people.

Both Ricko's parent company and Masterpiece's partner are inspected by their clients. Ricko's parent company, especially, is subject to surprise visits by one of its major clients, who also enforces a worker quality standard. In fact, one of Ricko's own customers requires inspections.

By the way, I was amused by the twit who said Chinese companies would do anything to cut costs. I would ask him to tell me how that's different from many American companies who routinely do the same thing.

[cfesmire]

I hope nobody investigates Joe Enriquez (EEX joe), he keeps his poor little elves chained under the bench and feeds them dog food (from China).

[skunk]

billc said:

That's an interesting article, but before you get too crazed about Mattel vs. the other companies, you need to remember a lot of those companies make products for multiple clients who might not be too thrilled about their new products being on display for reporters.

Yeah, it's certainly a fluff piece. But worth reading nonetheless.

I imagine that Spark/Redline's workers are also well-treated, judging by the skill that goes into their work.