I’m sure a lot of you have heard about the recent product recall of about 18+ million toys. The owner of the Chinese factory that made them, committed suicide while the CEO of Mattel, Inc. Bob Eckert issued a statement saying -

“his company has “rigorous standards” and apologized as the company was forced to recall millions of toys for the second time in two weeks.”

Is that the best you can do Bob?

Here’s a thought, RESIGN!

In 2005 a 7 year old girl, Paige Kostrzewski, had swallowed some magnets that got detached from a Polly Pocket toy. She needed two weeks of hospitalization for treatment, and cost about $40,000. The mother went to a lawyer and Mattel settled out of court for an undisclosed amount.

Shame on the mother for having accepted the money and put other kids at risk by not letting this matter go public, and even more shame on the CEO of Mattel, Bob Eckert, for having his legal team silence a mother by paying her off. {link to article}

Corporations like Mattel, Wal-Mart, K-mart and any number of U.S and International companies are always looking at ways to reduce costs while increasing profits. It’s business, of course.

It is no secret that they shop around for various manufacturing companies in places like China, India, Thailand etc… to offer them a cheaper price while meeting their “rigorous standards“. I’ve seen way too many documentaries where factories are cleaned up only before a visit, and the workers taught to smile at the corporate folk when they pass by. Even though they might be grossly underpaid and profusely hate their job.

It is a battle between manufacturers in these countries to get contracts. So they do the best they can, at the cheapest price they can. If they don’t produce everything themselves they get raw materials, like paint, from other companies. So in this case the owner of the toy manufacturing company who committed suicide had no idea, so it seems, his best friend was supplying him fake paint.

Why did his best friend do that?

I guess he had to either

• provide paint at a certain cost or lose the contract
• he wanted to make more money for himself and supplied a cheaper product or
• even worse he just didn’t care or didn’t know.

Three different points of view - but in a world where check writing corporations control the last word fueled in part by the consumers who demand cheaper prices, stockholders who watch share prices with an eagle eye and market competition that is always trying to catch up - I will let you make up your mind which of the above reasons to go with.

I’m not blaming this on one single person or company. I blame it on the system of how things are set up. Money has become such an overbearing force, that it drives everybody to do things that are just plain wrong. Some of you may agree with me, some not and some not understand what I’m bickering about.

We’re living in a world where bottled water is becoming the next gold rush. I just see clean drinking water as everyone’s basic birth right and not a corporate entity. I think a parent and their kid should NOT have to worry about unsafe toys, or any product, just because some person in a suit wanted a cheaper price for customers who demand it. So a manufacturer has to get cheaper materials or he can’t pay his workers or turn a profit for himself. If he doesn’t he’ll lose the contract and be completely out of business, but he can’t raise prices because then nobody would buy the products and that would not be good for the head corporations stock holders and market share and the cycle goes on and on…Do you understand what I’m trying to say?

That saying comes to mind now - You get what you pay for!

About the author

Hyder has been blogging for the past two years on this blog. He started Weborithm, his web company, in 2007 and along with designing blogs and websites also releases various web related products.