Case Study - How Chinese Toymakers Respond to Recalls I. Introduction
In 2007, the US Consumer Product Safety Commission CPSC announced five different recalls of Mattel’s toy because of the below two issues:
1. 9.3 million play-sets with small magnets inside toys could be swallowed by young children and it may have potential of fatal accident. They included Polly Pocket dolls and Barbie and Tanner
2. Exceed of lead contain of the paint by US safe limit 0.06% of paint. They included 1.5 million Fisher Price infant toys and 253000 of Mattel “Sarge” die cast car.
Such recalls has sharpened the concern whether industry and governments can stop and control Chinese manufacturer from using lead paint. From those cases, we should not only …show more content…

Recommendation – To provide the quality product to the consumer, retailer should implement the quality control for all products in the store. They should inspect the good from third party agency before launching to ensure the product must fulfill quality standard form government. Random checking from different demographic store must be taken place.
From importer’s perspective, the strategy from Mattel reacted prematurely disproportionate blame on Chinese toymakers and appeared fearful and defective. Recommendation - As all we know the recall can impact the sales, damage the image reputation, so once the crisis broke out, management team should consider what issues would make the corporation most vulnerable and which would be the most urgent. Have a good planning to handle the recall measures and compensation procedure is needed to be done. After the crisis, long term quality control with outsourcing factories must be planned. Toy safety regulation must be posted in company website with different language so that all outsourcing vendors can access and update every year. Quality Control training should provide to qualified vendors within certain period of time.
From manufacturer perspective, we can see there are three different reactions to handle the recall.
Lee Der – As Cheung used the vendor of his close friend and trusted their product without testing them for