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Hong Kong: Day 7 Heading home
January 10, 2008
Last night, I attended a seminar put on by the TIA to explain its safety initiative. There was a nice turnout with representatives from some of the major retailers (Wal-Mart, Toys R Us, and Shopko among those I spotted) and manufacturers in the audience.
Essentially, the toy industry is planning a protocol that is comprehensive, consistent and mandatory. They want it to be thorough without being overbuilt.
Questions from the audience indicated a strong desire to have a system that assures safe toys but does not overburden the industry with redundant testing that adds cost but not value. In other words, have one umbrella testing protocol rather than each retailer and government having one of their own. The TIA leadership echoed back that concern and indicated that that was their goal as well.
The plan is to have the system ready to present to the CPSC by the middle of February. As I listened to the speakers my thought was that what they were attempting was highly important and extremely complex. Making it even more daunting will be pleasing the industry, the consumer, the press, the US government, the Chinese government and every candidate running for President.
We have smart people putting this together but they are going to need a good deal of cooperation and good will from all involved to make it happen. We should all wish them the best of luck. They are going to need it.
I would like to close on a high note. Over the last two days I have had the opportunity to speak with a number of toy company owners and they unanimously report that they had a very good show. They said that all buyers showed up for their appointments, that the buyers were all forward looking, and that they got good responses to their products. I asked them about buyer responses to the price increases and they responded that the more experienced buyers understood that the price increases were to the most part justified. All in all, they seemed very pleased. So, on that note, I head home.
Posted by Richard Gottlieb on January 10, 2008 | Comments (0)
