Toy-safety law raises concerns with
thrift-store owners, game makers

By Melissa Westphal
BusinessRockford.com
Feb 04, 2009 @ 05:06 PM

Michael and Tabi Hutchinson have lost plenty of sleep lately over a new law that could severely restrict sales of children’s’ toys and clothing.

The Hutchinsons run Kidz Closet, a consignment and resale shop in Rockford, and say confusion and uncertainty surrounding the law have resale and thrift-store owners worried about the new costs of doing business.

“We were like everybody else around the country, wondering if we should just shut down the business,” Michael Hutchinson said.

The new requirements of the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act take effect Tuesday and entail more rigorous testing for lead and phthalates, a substance used to make plastics more flexible. The law applies to every product marketed to children 12 and younger.

The rush to comply has created “chaos and confusion,” said Nancy Nord, acting chairwoman of the Consumer Product Safety Commission, in her Jan. 30 letter explaining why Congress needs to reconsider the changes. The CPSC has delayed some of the compliance requirements, but resale and thrift stores still can face fines and criminal charges if they sell products that violate the new limits.

Goodwill Industries of Northern Illinois and the Wisconsin Stateline Area Inc. are pulling children’s items from their six stores in Rockford, Sterling, Freeport and Machesney Park and Beloit, Wis., to comply with the law.

Craig Grugel, director of retail operations for Goodwill in Machesney Park, shows empty shelves that once were full of toys on Wednesday, Feb. 4, 2009. The toys had to be pulled from the shelves because they may be unsafe.

Craig Grugel, Goodwill’s director of retail operations, said officials were already picky about what items made it to the sales floor because of past recalls.

Now, Goodwill is pulling clothing items with metallic buttons, paint or appliqués, all metal toys and children’s jewelry. Grugel said the toy sections will be thinner, too.

“We’re committed to safety, and we’re in good faith pulling those categories from stores and hoping we get better direction from the Consumer Product Safety Commission,” Grugel said.

Nationally, 20 percent of Goodwill’s sales are from children’s items. And because of the economy, people are holding on to their belongings longer, meaning donations are down at a time when more people need the discounts offered at thrift stores.

The Hutchinsons are also picky about what they accept at the Kids Closet. They stopped taking car seats more than three years ago, and as a general rule, they only accept items less than 2 years old.

Hutchinson said they scour Web sites and message boards trying to stay abreast of product recalls and new laws. But with the changes set to take effect in less than a week, many local store owners say the laws are still unclear.

“We have kids and grandkids, so we understand. We couldn’t live with ourselves if something happened,” Hutchinson said. “The part that scares us is that they can’t flat-out tell us that we’re absolutely not liable. We have redoubled our efforts because of this, and if we kept something before that looked OK, we’re less inclined to keep it now if we can’t find information on it.”

Adele Meyer, executive director of the Michigan-based National Association of Resale & Thrift Shops, has spent all day every day the past few months explaining to her 1,000-member organization that the law does indeed affect them.

Meyer said the CPSC doesn’t have enough manpower to educate everyone affected by the changes or police every resale shop or garage sale in the country.

“No one is exempt, and no products are exempt, from the law,” Meyer said. “The problem is, no stores know if a consumer advocacy group is going to target them or make an example of them in the media. Most of the stores are already being careful, and most of these products are harmless.

“The CPSC has given us a law that is so broad, so all-encompassing, so much to deal with. We’re just one industry affected. This industry needs some kind of choice between violating the law and closing business.”

The new legislation also directly affects toy and game maker Patch Products in Beloit, Wis., said Lisa Wuennemann, the company’s director of communications. Wuennemann said the changes have added production time to everything they make and increased costs because of new testing requirements.

For example, the law, as it reads now, puts stricter requirements on testing every product in a manufacturer’s line — in Patch Products’s case, 900 of them.

Wuennemann said the company — and manufacturers nationwide — would prefer to test components, such as the rubber used in more than 200 products, instead of testing each component in its products.

The law also requires inaccessible parts on toys and games to be tested. Patch Products has a new product slated for 2009 with 40 trinkets inside of a sealed tube, and all of those parts must be tested.

“It’s getting ready to go into production next month, and we’re considering not producing it all because we don’t know if we can afford the testing and still make a profit,” Wuennemann said.

The Consumer Product Safety Commission announced last weekend the delay some of the changes for manufacturers, but Wuennemann said Patch Products has already spent a substantial amount of money complying with the new law now with no idea of how and whether the legislation will be changed again.