January 22, 2008

Mattel's CEO recalls a rough summer

22 January 2008—Bob Eckert, the chairman and CEO of Mattel, will never forget the way he spent his 53rd birthday August 14. He sat in front of a television camera set up in a conference room in Mattel’s headquarters in El Segundo, Calif. Talking into the dark lens, he delivered the same bad news over and over, in as many live newscasts as he could: Mattel was recalling 18.2 million toys, the most in company history, because of lead paint and design flaws, and there could be more recalls to come.

“Anyone from the media who wanted to talk to us, we talked to that day,” recalls Eckert. “That’s when I understood this was different from anything we’d done before. This wasn’t just another product recall.”

Full Article