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

Appendix: Comment from Top Toy
To SwedWatch, Attn. Kristina Bjurling Comments to “Leksaker til vilket pris?” 2004.09.28
We agree with the report that a dialog between the company placing the orders and their
suppliers is important for the process of improving the working conditions. Audits by itself
without follow up with a constructive dialog will not help this process.
TOP-TOY, as the leader on the Swedish toys retail market, has an advance sourcing structure.
This fully supports our goal to be “Corporate Social Responsible” (CSR), and e.g. TOP-
TOY’s “Code of Conduct” is integrated with our business contracts. TOP-TOY can confirm
improvements within the last few years.
The report states that limited information is shown on the web-site www.top-toy.com. Please
note that TOP-TOY has our dedicated web-site targeted to our suppliers on
www.top-toy.com.hk. Click on “Supplier info” for more details, including our full “Code of
Conduct” (downloadable in English and Chinese). We find the information more relevant for
our suppliers, compared to the end consumers.
In January 2004 TOP-TOY arranged a visit for SwedWatch to 2 factories in China, and in
May 2004 we arranged another visit to the same factory and a new factory. In total we have
shown 3 of TOP-TOY’s key suppliers to, but only one (Supplier “B”) is included in the
report?
One of the factories SwedWatch visited, including filming and interview, is the key supplier
of games to TOP-TOY. This factory has a modern management and they are applying for the
ICTI certificate. SwedWatch saw examples where TOP-TOY has moved game products from
lower grade factories to this factory, where TOP-TOY accepted price increases of between
20-40% for “the same product”. This is showing TOP-TOY’s commitment to our CSR. The
previous suppliers were not interested in a dialog about the working conditions.
The report is missing one important point, and that is the support of the professional and often
expensive factories is essential to keep on the improvement in the factories.
We are unpleased with some of the findings, and we are working with Fair Trade
Center/HKCIC to clarify the serious issues. All 6 factories manufacturing TOP-TOY branded
products have within the last few years been audited by TOP-TOY, and therefore we have a
detailed level of information about the factories. TOP-TOY has agreed under confidentiality
to share and compare the findings from TOP-TOY’s audit with the interviews made by
HKCIC.
The additional research is going on with Fair Trade Center/HKCIC and TOP-TOY. We
expect it will result in:
• TOP-TOY’s Audit tools and Procedures will be improved as much as possible to
cover unknown problems.
• Where the problems are confirmed likely, follow up (including a correction plan) with
the relevant suppliers will be made.
In the report the “conclusions” are made based on the assumptions that the information from
the interviews is nothing but the truth.
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