With the strict safety and quality standards of children’s toys, there is absolutely no room for non-compliance. Compliance issues can cause potential health hazards and in some cases fatalities. Here we discuss the importance of toy testing and provide you with an exact outline of toy safety regulations and all of the most recent updates to help you avoid compliance issues, so that you can continue to produce toys of the highest quality. The toy industry is a lucrative one with “toy sales in 2015 increasing by 4% over 2014 to $87.4billion…with estimated growth expected to exceed $90 billion in sales in 2016.”
There is surely continued opportunities for economic growth and sustainable innovation in this massive industry going into 2017 and beyond.
But, the toy market, and product safety specifically, makes it a volatile one.
What happens when due diligence is left by the wayside?
41% of toys that were recalled in the EU alone were due to choking hazards, whilst chemical compositions makes the second largest recall between January 2016 and July 2017.
By looking at the graph below, you will see the breakdown of recalls over this period of time:
The stats above paint a clear picture for importers to abide by toy safety compliance standards, for it is not only in your best economic interest, but also for your brand’s protection and growth.
Today, children’s toys are subject to some of the strictest safety and quality standards in the retail marketplace due to the sensitive nature of their consumer base.
The question is…
How do importers keep up with the latest news in toy safety regulations to avoid potential disasters and recalls as reflected above?
In this blog post, I seek to highlight the EU EN71 safety standards that your imported toys need to comply with. I will also highlight the latest updates of this standard, to ensure you are up to date with the latest in toy compliance.
We also look at the US standard, ASTM F963, where we will highlight the latest updates to ensure that your products are in compliance. Lastly, I seek to provide you with actionable steps to achieving compliance according to these standards and what you can do to continue producing children’s toys of the highest quality.
EN 71
The EN71 is a set of European Product Safety standards that apply to all toys, sold in the European Union. The EN 71 also forms a part of the CE directive. As an importer of children’s toys you will need to ensure that the toys you are importing into Europe are labelled with this CE mark.
This mark basically stipulates that a particular toy is compliant with the safety regulations as laid out by the European Union and its safety standard.
Here is a table of what this standard is inclusive of, but I will also highlight the ones that have been updated recently so that you, know exactly what your products need to be compliant with;
TABLE of EN71
The latest EN71 update includes
The latest children’s toy update and revision of the above table is as follows;
The CEN has published Toy safety standard EN 71-12:2016 for n-nitrosamines and n-nitrosatable substances. This standard is expected to be harmonized under Toy Safety Directive 2009/48/EC by publication in the Official Journal of the European Union (OJEU).
Major change of the new version includes this;
- More stringent limits of n-nitrosamines and n-nitrosatable substances for toys intended for use by children under 36 months and intended or likely to be placed into the mouth of the child.
- a modified definition for ‘elastomer’ from ISO 472:2013 (Plastics – Vocabulary, for better clarity)
- a new procedure for the extraction process for toys and parts of toys other than balloons
- use of porous graphitic carbon (PGC) reversed phase (C18) high performance liquid chromatography (HLPC) columns as an additional option for analysis
- an additional set of multiple reaction monitoring-transitions (MRM-transitions) for quantification and identification
What this revision should mean for your sourcing and production strategies
This standard is applicable to the following products;
- Toys and parts of toys made from elastomers and intended for use by children under 36 months
- Toys and parts of toys made from elastomers and intended to be placed in the mouth
- Finger paints for children under 36 months
Manufacturers will need to provide evidence of compliance from the supplier of these materials, before the manufacturing of these items can proceed. There may also be a random sampling after mass production for post production testing to ensure you are not in violation of the above safety regulations.
ASTM F963-16
The ASTM F 963-16, The Standard Consumer Safety Specification for Toy Safety, is a comprehensive standard that addresses numerous hazards that have been identified with toys.
The latest ASTM F963 update includes
- Among the changes, the 2016 revision addresses ride-on toys with: a new curb impact requirement, a clarification of overload and stability requirements, and a strap exemption.
- new labelling requirements for toys that have certain small coins or button batteries,
- temperature and current-limiting requirements for lithium-ion batteries, and
- new requirements for materials and toys that could expand if accidentally swallowed.
- Other revisions include:
– new soaking and compression tests for magnets
– new requirements and clarifications related to microbiological safety;
– clarifications to heavy elements requirements for toy substrate materials
– revised requirements for toys involving projectiles; and,
– clarification of requirements and supplemental guidance for impact hazards.
What this revision should mean for your sourcing and production strategies
You will have noticed that all children’s toys that have been produced after 30 April 2017 needed to be tested according to ASTM F963-16.
According to ASTM F963-16 all toys that are intended for children of 12 years old and under need to be tested by a registered CPC third party testing and quality provider, who will then furnish you with the appropriate product specific CPC which declares that your product complies with the federal toy safety standard.
Suggestions for complying with these toy testing regulations
As an importer you may be feeling overwhelmed about adhering to the regulations as laid out above and while you should be doing everything you can to adhere to them, here we lay out a few suggestions of how to go about doing this;
- You need to work towards improving quality control procedures by strictly monitoring the quality of raw materials. Do not fall into the trap of using cheaper, substandard materials. Whilst this may be appealing for cost reduction, you will be putting your brand at unnecessary risks.
- Improving your products quality always needs to be a primary goal. Many of the new updates in regulation also stipulate the use of a third party quality provider as mandatory for your products compliance.
- Ensure you use a third party company that is up to date with the latest in toy testing and safety regulations. This will reduce the risks of potential product recalls resulting in a bad image for your brand, but also a loss in revenue.
- Seek new non-toxic environmentally-friendly raw materials. How do you go about sourcing your raw materials? This may step may be a little more difficult to pursue, but let’s take a look at Lego. Their blocks are made of plastic, but currently, they are investing loads of money and time into finding alternatives to plastic for their famous building blocks. It’s this kind of commitment that ensures a positive and innovative position in the market place.
Understanding the regulations and what they mean for your current sourcing strategy for children’s toys will help give appropriate direction and guidelines to your current competitive positioning in the market place.
By understanding these regulations and ensuring compliance according to them, you are able to guard yourself against potential product recalls and even potential lawsuits that could come from health and safety violations that are sadly too often found within children’s toys.
“API is equipped to meet the above product testing and safety requirements accordingly to ensure your brand’s safety and protection.”
A social compliance audit can be difficult to attain, but is an absolute necessity for that transparent supply chain your consumers today are demanding.
A social compliance audit ensures that a factory and its practices are abiding by all local laws and that you meet all of the social obligations as set out by the guidelines of the audit, from fair wages to no instances of child labor in a factory.
In this blog post, I will outline the exact procedure of this audit, the benefits it offers to your consumer electronics brand and how you can go about conducting this audit for yourself.
So, let’s dive in…
Document reviews – Auditors will check all the documentation of the supplier to determine the presence of any possible child labour, an all too common violation within the consumer electronics industry. They also assess whether there are any violations of extended working hours and wages. They will also look into what types of social insurance are available to workers and review any fire and safety documentation, which will help to determine whether or not any safety precautions or plans are in place. They will also inspect whether or not there is any environmental monitoring being done and, if so, how it is conducted.
Employee interviews – The auditors conduct interviews with the factory in question staff, where they ask them about their working hours, overtime, and about their holiday/leave time. Auditors also like to cross check these statements by interviewing factory management to ensure there are no discrepancies. This helps to clarify whether there are any instances of abuse or misconduct between staff and management. In the case of a re-audit these interviews will then be conducted again to ensure improvement plans are being implemented properly.
Closing meeting with audit status – This meeting reveals the audit results of your CE factory and also makes suggestion for improvements. If you use 
In understanding the ethical compliance standards as laid out above, you are able to make informed decisions about the suppliers you choose to use in the manufacturing of your electrical products.
It turns out that 
Many organizations do not have the extensive geographical networks that larger retailers have.
Therefore your internal staff ends up spending a lot of time traveling for quality control inspections, with not enough time spent focusing on the quality of a product. This often slows down production processes, with a longer eventual time to market.
If we take the Fidget Spinner example into consideration, what is the likelihood of your in-house team being aware of that noncompliance before it hit the market.
Think about it.
An occurrence such as the above puts your brand at an unnecessary risk, with the potential for bad publicity and a major loss in sales.
Can your organization afford this?
Some testing equipment may be unique to a specific product or if there is an update in testing procedures to be inclusive of recent changes in regulation.
Often external providers are able to provide technical solutions based on the above specifications, along with teams that are well versed in new testing procedures.
External providers will often send their inspectors on training to familiarize themselves with new equipment and testing procedures to ensure a high quality service is offered with a minimum product recall rate.
For third party quality providers it is a priority to be up to date with the latest trends and developments in your industry along with the best practices that you should be following.
This kind of knowledge and expertise can be leveraged to your competitive advantage.
your product.
Add all of this together, and you begin to see higher profit margins and the ability in which you can meet your products supply and demand will also have grown, creating that desired competitive advantage.
Let’s take a brief look at the Technical Compliance File solution;
This is a compliance solution that allows you reliable and accurate insights into your compliance processes.
It is offered through a web-based platform and is a 
Inspection reports are essential in getting shipments released from customs. It will be up to the retailer alongside your quality provider to set up a report rating guideline.
This report rating guideline forms a baseline of automation which reduces the amount of manual changes after the reports review. The manual reviewing of these reports slow down the auto shipment processes immensely and this entire process becomes less meaningful.
An external quality provider will be able to provide you with industry knowledge and best practices relating to rating reports. You will also be able customize your rating reports according to your product needs.
Once this report rating has been created, your quality provider can utilize their technical systems to send daily reports to both the client and your chosen cargo company. This creates a much clearer and faster release process for both you and the cargo company.
The mountain of paperwork from import licenses to full inspection reports, they have it down to a tee, enabling a streamlined, efficient process for your organization.
Traditionally an inhouse team often releases inspection reports as and when they receive them causing major delays, this is often due to in-house QC teams needing to travel extensively, which means they don’t have enough time to make the approvals that are needed for the shipments to be released in a timely manner.
Not to sound repetitive, but to have an in-house team that has the capacity to manage the logistics involved with shipping would be a dream, no doubt, but getting through customs safely stems from being efficient in all the other points I’ve made above.
In-house teams without the right amount of time, resources and technical expertise will struggle to cope with issues that could have otherwise been prevented.
So here’s the deal…
Managing quality is a complex system that needs 100% of your attention and focus.
Are you able to dedicate that kind of time and resource to ensuring just that?
This is a question that many often do not want to answer, but the reality is that you often cannot afford the time and resource that goes into creating fully optimized quality systems that can produce high-quality products for your brand and on time.
So, what then?
It might be worth considering hiring an external third party quality provider that can give you the time and resources that you need to streamline your supply chain operations.
A third party quality provider is able to provide you with;
* The latest in product regulation
* Technical expertise
* They have the appropriate technology to streamline your operations
* They have the know how on how to navigate the waters of international logistics for your brand.
This will give you room to begin focusing on what you are good at; producing those high-quality products and creating a level of trust with your consumer that is globally competitive.
Have experienced working with third party quality inspection services? 
Product specification can look anything like your products dimensions, the volume, it’s weight, the color and any specific labeling that it may need to meet regulation.
In your specifications you need to ensure that you are as specific as you can possibly be, from specific color palettes to the maximum weight of an electric blender. The more specific you are, the easier it will be for your supplier to meet your specifications.
These specifications will also provide your supplier’s quality control team with a standard/guide to monitor the production of the item appropriately.
This is where the 
A laptop’s battery overheating that when unattended whilst charging can cause fires would be classified as a critical defect.
Therefore an important question you should be asking your supplier before all this is, how they will go about preventing any quality issues that may arise during your operation?
Understanding how your supplier handles quality pressures and compliance procedures will help define what kind of relationship you have with them.
Before mass production, your supplier needs to provide you with a 
Managing product defects can also be addressed after mass production through a .jpg)
is also a dedicated IT team to ensuring the safety of the software and only API employees are allowed to make modifications to the platform.
Many of the compliance complexities that arise are in the collection and gathering of all the necessary documentation. Many manufacturers, importers and retailers today are still operating on outdated systems like spreadsheets, creating unreliable data and documentation, which creates an almost insurmountable task trying to maintain the information for each product reference. 
you insight into your compliance status whenever you need it. There are also progress charts allowing you actionable insight into timelines and your supplier progress. This solution is also able to store all your documents for up to 10 years, ensuring your documents are safely stored for any future reference. 
Both of these retailers experienced significant challenges within their supply chains, one had even previously adopted the services of a 3rd party QA provider, who made no strides in overcoming their challenges with them.
The quality of a product can be defined in many ways and is almost always dependent on your specific consumer and their definition of quality for your specific item. So in that light, you will need to know exactly what your consumer is looking for to create the quality your brand is looking to achieve.
When a consumer sets out to look for a quality product, they want to feel as though they have paid less than what the actual product is worth, the quality of the product far surpassing the amount they ended up paying. Fulfilling the need to exceed the consumer’s expectations, this is what true quality is all about.
If fulfilling the need to meet your consumer’s expectations is at the top of your company’s agenda, is it not essential for your brand’s products to meet a level of quality that does just that? Let me leave you pondering that for a bit.
In attempting to understand your customer’s definition of quality, it will be important to note that fulfilling consumer expectation and experience forms a part of that definition.
Let me give you an example; If a consumer orders a product that has met and passed all quality tests it needed to meet, that product for all intents and purposes is a quality item. But, if the order arrives later than promised or arrives with a missing screw or the incorrect color, the consumer may not define this product as an item of value and quality.
Striving for product quality is a stems right from the raw materials used, to the way in which it arrives to your customer, therefore every step needs to be taken into consideration.
craze of fidget spinners and, where 200, 000 of these spinners have been recalled due to it 
they want to know where its raw materials were sourced, how it was made, who made it and what its level of quality is. They ask themselves whether or not your product will be an investment in their lives.
The key here will be to know your target market, know your consumer. If you do not know what they want, you will struggle to be their go-to brand; you will lose out on their brand evangelism and praise affecting your bottom line
“Is this the type of brand and product you wish to create?”
Retailers today are under so much pressure with the current supply and demand of products, that quality and/or compliance is not always a priority.
“But, it should be!”
Bad quality and non-compliance both mean that your brand is at an unnecessarily high risk with regards to meeting regulations and your reputation. It will be worth all the hard yards that you put in from the creation and design to the manufacturing and distribution of your products. This will help mitigate unnecessary risk, saving you money and precious time.
A POA is essential for filling out shippers exportation documents. This exportation document cannot be completed without a valid POA. Without it, your shipment will not be released, costing you time and money.
“So, what happens when one of these documents are not in order?”
You incur costs that begin adding up on a daily basis. Your shipment will be warehoused, where you will be billed for every day your shipment is there. It will be time consuming. Much of the paperwork mentioned above takes time to complete, but now you will be waiting on paperwork while raking up warehouse fees. This is not an ideal situation but can be avoided with thorough, well-kept, organized paperwork and a dash of patience to go along with it.
