Hubris, Costs, and the Wrong Focus

Please people. Mattel has followed the same pattern explained in the book by Jim Collins, How the Mighty Fall. First step is hubris. People up and down the ranks have been thinking for years they were unassailable in their number 1 position. The problem was visible a few years ago but the stock price was too high to convince anyone. Lego went flying by and now the death spiral at Mattel has begun. Will there be the leadership to get out of it? I hope so.

The second issue has been the incessant focus on cost cutting. The focus should have been on quality instead. Didn't Mattel learn anything during the recall years? Product quality has sucked for years with high numbers of defects in the marketplace but the attitude has been "we don't have time to fix the quality problems and besides, it'll be off the shelf next season anyway". Couldn't the company rally behind being the best quality toymaker; especially at FP where infants are using the product?

The third issue for Mattel has been the wrong focus. Instead of innovation for consumers, the focus has been on filling the shelves at the right price point for retailers. Toy fairs are the perfect example of the incessantly wrong focus. Mattel needs to be remade, starting with its supposed "culture of innovation" which is really nothing much more than a culture of "lots of more-of-the-same SKUs".

Please people. It hasn't been just senior management. I've worked with many of you. You're all complicit.

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Let's just get all the EVP's, SVP's, & Directors there $alaries paid. Who cares about Play value & quality & stock value?

Go Lego, go Hasbro.

But please let go of Kilpin, Dickson, Doug W, Mazzacco, DVoss, Strom, etc, etc................but let's keep $tockdown at more $ as a consultant after he ruined the Company. Hello & thanks Bob Eckert u POS :)

Just saying.

Such a great post #86, you nailed it

Excellent points all, 83286. But with great power comes great responsibility. Upper management only talks the talk about innovation and creativity. To select new lines & products, they handed the keys to the kingdom not to the designers who actually know fun and understand play patterns, but to marketing, who in many cases have no toy background and are often fresh out of school. Yet there is a culture of arrogance and hubris within marketing, they do not usually mix with design people well. Marketing actually thinks they are "innovative" and finished when they deliver their cookie-cutter slots & rats and line listing. "Guys, gimme a bunch of $5 SKUs, some $10, maybe a $15 in Spring, and a $35 for Christmas. Needs innovation and a TV moment. Call me when it's ready." "Challenge the team." "Take it to the next level." Then if & when you get a buyoff on marketing, Design faces the VP gauntlet. Decisions are delayed. "Let's test it and see how it does." Then Market research, followed by a hasty redesign by committee and a few iterations later, time's up and another mediocre item is born. We need a total culture revamp. We need to dispense with this paradigm, break up this power monopoly and give the creatives equal footing. Most great products are design-driven by very passionate individuals, not teams. But Mattel actually believes that the team approach, homogenizing a concept until everyone is equally disenchanted, yields the best results. Until they can get past that, we will continue to slip in the marketplace with third rate products. Upper management hopes & thinks China can handle design and development, bypassing ES design entirely. Bad gamble.

"Couldn't the company rally behind being the best quality toymaker; especially at FP where infants are using the product?" - I agree. Much has been done to try to cost reduce product, but FP (EA in particular) has tried so extremely hard the last years to hit all the schedule, cost and production requirements while also trying to achieve the good quality and play value. Nobody wants to make a crap product. Doing a bad job might damage the brand long term and it's reputation for quality. I imagine you already know that.

Thread regarding Mattel Inc. layoffs

Hubris, Costs, and the Wrong Focus

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