China has been taking quite a justified beating in the global press for their product safety crisis. From toys to medicine China is stumbling over its global reputation. Today’s article in the New York Times proves Europe has learned from the mistakes of American toy companies.
Mattel is probably the biggest American company to also take such a beating in the press. They probably deserve it in making the choice to shift production outside the US where they easily have manpower to inspect factories. In China it has proved to be a huge disaster. Where was Mattel’s Quality Assurance on this one?
Mattel is really guilty of not working hard enough to grow their business relationship in China. After all, at some point Mattel executives felt comfortable enough to shift business overseas yet clearly failed to ensure their new relationship was running smoothly. Mattel’s public statement.
May I also suggest they may have overlooked rewarding those factory owners, to ensure smooth operations (and no lead-based paints) on their products? I’m not suggesting they grease someone’s palm or provide inappropriate gifts, however setting up business rewards on mutually agreed output and quality targets would have gone a long way for Mattel right now.
Do you remember the news of Zheng Xiaoyu, the Chinese government official who accepted bribes as a Food and Drug Administrator? He was found guilty and executed.
Lesson learned for Chinese administrators and factory owners? Maybe not.
Tags: Globalization, China, Mattel, business relationship, global reputation, outsourcing