https://twitter.com/TheLayoff/status/910267946353688576
25 replies (most recent on top)
Did TRU take Dino-Gator?
Question: how many people in ES are needed to make a good toy?
Answer: its obvious more than they currently have.....
I'm still waiting for "5 Cars" to explain the value and financial successes that any brand in ES has had in the last 4 years.
Maybe just one?
Overvalued FP?! HAHAHAHAHAHA! Hmmm let's go by the numbers, shall we:
FP = $2.2 Billion in sales - staff = 75 in NYC and 250 in EA
Barbie, Hotwheels, ToyBox = $2.0 Billion in sales - staff = 600 people
Looks like you need twice as many Californians to deliver the same revenue than hardworking East Coasters. No surprise - the work ethic has always been invisible in ES (as is the Strategy from the CSO).
Oh overvalued FP are you nervous? You'll get sold to a Chinese company that will carve you apart like roast pork at Chinese New Year.
Your product does not have to be managed from NY. Nothing about that location is added value. If anything margins will increase if they move that office to Mexico. Better brush up on your espanol before that wall your buddy wants goes up.
Dear Naive One:
If it were that easy we would've done it already. No one chooses to make bad product - including management. Did you ever look in the mirror and ask WHY? Decisions are made the way they are?
It's the factors of how Mattel has been built and there isn't a way to stop it.
Btw if the team you're in is HotWheels, take a look at your bottom line profit and report back on how you compare to FP or Thomas - in both $$$ and percentage.
Dear Business Folk:
Sorry to hear that the designers you work with are only interested in drawing pretty pictures. Can't imagine how terrible that must be. I agree with the last poster.
Fortunately, the business unit I work in at Mattel, all the disciplines work together as a cohesive group. We understand each other's impact on the business. But, we rely on each other's expertise. The Designers here are completely in touch with that and we respect their creative talent.
So, before you put down the need to create great product again over business needs, I would perhaps do a little soul searching and get back to doing what you yourself know is the right thing to do. This is how you turn this ship around!
If we continue to fund Barbie's decline by increasing our margin expectations elsewhere we will rot to death from the inside out.
Let's start making great product again!!!
"Everything else will follow."
What I get a kick out of is how we undermine and defeat ourselves. HR fosters this environment of tolerance, inclusion and fairness while the Exec Team is a group of barbarians practicing cannabilism amongst themselves.
Mattel has GOT to change its culture and STOP pandering to Millennials and hire new, professional Management. It needs to look outside of its own company and realize the death-fight it's in. In all business it's not about being fair - it's only about WINNING.
The sooner Mattel changes the sooner it will become the hunter in this industry instead of what it is now - food.
Sorry. There's no room or excuse for being green at the moment. Company's sinking and take overs are imminent. Why are you bickering amongst yourselves? It's all out of your hands you armchair quarterbacks. Polish up your resumes and cv's. Brush up on your interview skills. Like a poster said, the party is over.
I agree with 21da. They may be a bit heavy-handed in their response, but the premise is correct: understand the business you're in, not just the job you do.
If you owned a car, you may not know how to take it apart and put it back together again, but you'd know enough that you can't just drive it endlessly until it runs out of gas and then sit there wondering why it isn't moving. Know the basics and if you don't know them, ask until you do.
Good product at Mattel is a very difficult thing to achieve since:
1) The company is public and answers to investors
2) Investors want a return on their investment
3) To do so means that product has be good AND priced fairly
4) Everything Mattel is developed with guidelines provided by Finance, whose only goal is to make up the margin and margin dollars necessary to provide #2
Mattel, as a company, has been nearly exclusively built on the margins from Fashion Dolls (which evolved to high percentages over 60 years of dominant actions and behaviors). When fashion dolls declines, the company is OBLIGATED to it's investors to make up the shortfall. This comes from layoffs, cuts in advertising and product development, and then raising prices and margin goals for the rest of the brands. In addition, good ideas for toys are either priced out of the market, or cost reduced to hit the inflated margin targets.
It may not make sense to you, but it is the way that business for Mattel works. Good toys isn't the issue - making up the ground lost by fashion doll declines is. The company has NO CHOICE but to do everything it must to deliver on #2. If the company is bought and taken private, then the margin pressure to make up for the decline of fashion dolls will subside and good toys can then be priced right.
Dear Design Folk:
I clearly don't respect you because I find it offensive that you willingly choose NOT to understand the entire business and then complain that your portion of it is not worshipped from on high. Show a little business acumen and maybe you'll be taken seriously as adult business people and not just worker bees making pretty pictures.
The company is too terrible a shape for you NOT to get this.
To the know it all “21da”. Try a real nice package, well promoted, with a crap toy in it and see how it sells, oh, wait a minute, mattel has been doing that and were at about $14.50 now. The product has to be good above all. Start out with a good product first skippy....
Hullabaloo? THAT IS THE EXACT REASON WHY WE ARE SO OUT OF TOUCH WITH OUR CONSUMERS!! Hacks within the corporate environment that haven't a clue about todays youth and their wants.
To the last poster, your intent to inform us with all the wisdom you possess for what makes a successful toy, is utter hullabaloo, because it's common sense.
Please don't refer to the latter poster as a "kid"...especially when their intent was referencing the need to create and sell great products again. Also, remember that we do work for a toy company and to much upfront business acumen can rot away any chance for success.
Also, this statement you make is so fundamentally flawed..."I often find that design folk only think it needs to look good (out of the package) and have no concept or interest to learn the rest of it. The more you understand the entire chain of events that have to happen to make a toy successful and the challenges to make it all happen then the better you can do your job."
Do you realize by saying that, that you appear to live in a vacuum of disrespect? It's like implying that you know everything and those young designers should know it all as well. You should no better, considering we were all green when starting our careers. What I admire in the poster you so maliciously and undeservingly put down, is their interest in creating good product again...which we must start doing and makes everything else easier regarding all those important ingredients required for a successful product.
The poster who said "Build a good toy, and they will sell" has got it so wrong. We're not in Santa's workshop, kids. It's a BUSINESS - like it or not. A "good toy" is one that sells - which means:
1) It needs to work well
2) Needs to look good in and out of the package (including the package)
3) Needs to be promoted - meaning in various direct and through-retailer means
4) Needs to be fun and engaging for a child
I often find that design folk only think it needs to look good (out of the package) and have no concept or interest to learn the rest of it. The more you understand the entire chain of events that have to happen to make a toy successful and the challenges to make it all happen then the better you can do your job.
The greatest toy in the world will never see the light of day on anyone's shelf it:
1) You aren't priced right
2) You don't have distribution
3) You don't have negotiated terms with your retailers
3) You still have unsold inventory of your last "good toy" stuck on the shelves (which require you to pay markdown money to clear it)
4) Hasn't passed CPSIA requirements
5) Doesn't have a full plan (including how to launch, how to sustain and then how to exit - yes, all toys eventually get closed out and you might as well plan for it then be surprised by it).
Last two posts were exactly correct, but I do agree with the mess that our distribution is in as I've seen in in action or lack thereof I should say.
When we overship they count it as sales but as we know it's not a sale until it's counted as a POS which is really funny because we all know the other meaning of POS is..............;)
We are in deep with TRU because they were willing to take the overshipments needed to make Q4 look like less of a disaster. Target and Wallmart have much better inventory control and won't take as much.
Build a good toy, and they will sell. When was the last time Mattel designed and built an exciting high quality toy?
Last poster:
It's not the sales people you need to blame regarding overshipping. That responsibility is that of the Board of Directors and Management. When Barbie isn't making her numbers, we overship everything else in a vain attempt to make up for the margin shortfall. Finance drives this, not sales.
I know for a fact that the Sales reps & those in charge of distribution are complete morons. When our products were once hot you couldn't find them at retail. Then they would over ship flood the market with crap. Then upper mismanagement would say all was better after their stupid "Turkey Trot"...........then we wonder why this place is where it is.
Our Q3 numbers are going to be in the toilet but "Onward & Downward" !!!!!!!!!!!!! and pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!!!!!!!!!!
"Glad we don't sell any toys there"? Really? Are you blind or just ignorant? Did you now that it was reported that TRU owes Mattel $135M and only owes Hasbro $59M? We're not only lopsided in our brand portfolio, but also lopsided in our distribution. We sell too many toys at TRU and haven't spread it enough to Target, WalMart and Amazon.
Agree - "such utter desperation to maintain the status quo by corporation."
Glad we don't sell any toys there or it could really affect us. I say good riddance.......how's our stock?
Where did the last post go? I guess Matt-hell spies are on this board and censoring. Did they learn that from all those relationships in China?
And Toys R us made the ridiculous statement that no stores would close.
Such utter desperation to maintain the status quo by corporations.
Never seen anything like it before, in 3 decades of being in business.