Mattel apologises to 'the Chinese people'

Mattel was forced to deliver a humiliating public apology to "the Chinese people" on Friday over the damaging succession of product recalls of China-made toys that the US toymaker has announced in recent months. In a carefully stage-managed meeting in Beijing with a senior Chinese official, which, unusually, was open to the media, Thomas Debrowski, Mattel’s executive vice-president for worldwide operations, read out a prepared text that played down the role of Chinese factories in the recalls. The apology was in stark contrast to recent comments from Robert Eckert, Mattel’s chief executive. In testimony to the US Senate last week, he suggested that the fault for the group’s recent product recalls lay with outside contractors. “We were let down, and so we let you down,” he said. Full story...

Posted by Editor at September 22, 2007 03:03 PM