4. Case study: Top Toy, Brio and Coop in China - Swedwatch

Ethical and environmental demands
Brio has followed the code of conduct of the sector organised by the International Council of
Toy Industries since 1995. Although the demands on the environment and ethics actually
don't differ when it comes to the company's own Brio branded products and the rest of its
selection, the inspections carried out by Brio differ considerably. Tomas Persson admits that
the inspection so far is as good as non-existent when it comes to products that are not branded
“Brio”.
– Today it is impossible to have full control of all suppliers. In many cases we have only been
to the office in Hong Kong or at a fair. We cannot guarantee that these suppliers follow our
demands”, said Tomas Person.
Tomas Person went on to suggest that Brio’s ambition is that the purchasers will begin active
inspection work. For example, Brio will open an office in Hong Kong where employees will
have the responsibility for this. Person cannot give any fixed date for when the inspection
work of the purchase of non-marked Brio products will be implemented. He does think
however that Brio has a large responsibility to follow up working conditions so that they are
ethically defendable, particularly as they have chosen to transfer even more of the production
to China.
Information to the consumers
On Brio’s website, consumers can quite easily see that Brio promotes ethical and
environmental demands 109 . In the section: “Brio follows international rules of justice”, the
demands and the responsibility of Brio are described. The only thing that is mentioned
regarding the inspection is that the managers and purchasers of Brio "constantly" do checkups.
The information on the website leaves the consumer to believe that the code of conduct and
all laws are followed in the production. This is however misleading, as 70 percent of Brio's
purchases are not currently controlled (i.e. the non Brio-branded products).
Suppliers in China
Brio is the customer of four of the suppliers (A, B, D and E) covered in HKCIC
investigation 110 . Supplier B is the main supplier of Brio in China and thus a company which
Brio puts a lot of confidence in.
Brio buys a fifth of the production of supplier D and therefore, Brio is an important customer
of supplier D. SwedWatch visited all of the suppliers except for supplier E during its visit to
the province of Guangdong in China in May 2004. Detailed accounts of the suppliers and to
what extent they follow the code of conduct and the legislation of Brio are given below.
Top Toy
The largest retailer in Sweden is BR-toys. BR-toys is owned by the Danish company, ‘Top
Toy A/S’, who also owns the rights to the American chain: ‘Toys R Us’ in the Nordic
countries 111 . Top Toy dominates the toy selling business in Sweden. Its market share is
estimated to be about 35 per cent.
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