You likely don’t know the name, but Irwin Mainway was at the forefront of consumer product safety. Perhaps not your typical leader in safety for consumers, but Mainway was raising awareness before most of us were spending much time thinking about the safety of promotional products.
More than 40 years ago, Irwin Mainway appeared on Saturday Night Live to defend his company’s products against claims they were unsafe. Mainway, played by Dan Aykroyd, refuted claims that his “Bag O’ Glass” was unsafe “because the average kid picks up glass everywhere anyway, so why not package it and give them what they want”? His defense for a teddy bear with a built-in chainsaw is classic Aykroyd from the early days of SNL, and the satire suggested that perhaps the government was a bit heavy-handed in that era while trying to protect consumers.
The Irwin Mainway character appeared in 1976, just three years after the Consumer Product Safety Commission was formed, but many years before the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act brought the rulings and regulations setting standards you know today in promotional product safety. Toy safety was originally the authority of the Food and Drug Administration. The FDA first enforced through a 1966 act directing them to ban toys containing “chemical, flammability, or radioactivity hazards.”
Three years later, those powers gained more teeth in the Child Protection and Toy Safety Act, which forbid the sale of toys determined to be hazardous. Today, toys continue to be a big product sourced in our industry, and among those that should be examined most closely in a risk assessment. Whether it’s because of the manufacturing and decorating process using heavy metals, or parts that can break off and be ingested, items with an intended usage group of children under 12 years of age demand the highest scrutiny. Whether regulations that some claim are too heavy-handed prove to be just that, more than a few end-user clients I speak with on a regular basis have simply chosen to not source them at all, saying it is not worth the risk. Where are you, your company, and clients on that front?
Now, for an update of sorts on the tragic collapse of Rana Plaza in Bangladesh that killed nearly 1,100 garment workers. Progress had been made to improve working conditions since that horrific event, but reporting by the New York Times now suggests there has been a setback. Protests over low wages began in December at several factories in the region, ones that manufacture for brands like The Gap and H&M. Several labor activists and leaders have been detained since the protests started last month, work has been disrupted, and nearly 1,500 workers have been fired, according to police.
The authorities say the activists have incited vandalism and other crimes against the factories they work for. Few apparel suppliers in our industry choose Bangladesh, but as more and more end-users favor secondary decoration of branded items, there is certainly reason to watch this region beyond the concern for the most basic of workers’ rights to safe conditions in the workplace and a fair wage.
Jeff Jacobs has been an expert in building brands and brand stewardship for more than 35 years, working in commercial television, Hollywood film and home video, publishing, and promotional brand merchandise. He’s a staunch advocate of consumer product safety and has a deep passion and belief regarding the issues surrounding compliance and corporate social responsibility. He recently retired as executive director of Quality Certification Alliance, the only non-profit dedicated to helping suppliers provide safe and compliant promotional products. Before that, he was director of brand merchandise for Michelin. As a recovering end-user client, he can’t help but continue to consult Fortune 500 consumer brands on promo product safety when asked. You can also find him working as a volunteer Guardian ad Litem, traveling the world with his lovely wife, or enjoying a cigar at his favorite local cigar shop. Follow Jeff on Twitter, or reach out to him at jacobs.jeffreyp@gmail.com.