Unsafe Products Mean Higher Prices for All of Us

Higher prices for you, and your clients. That’s what the United Nations says is ahead for all of us, largely due to the fact that there are too many unsafe products finding their way into the supply chain. We’re all already enduring pandemic supply chain woes, anxiously awaiting product to deliver and crossing fingers that it actually, someday, manages to make it where it’s supposed to be. 

Now, the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development further cautions there’s more vulnerability ahead due to unsafe products worldwide. In a statement last month, the UN warns that “rogue traders whose unsafe products have been withdrawn from one market can export them to countries with weaker consumer product safety, disregarding consumers’ right to safe products.”

The UN’s analysis is that a 10% increase in food prices has already triggered a 5% decrease in the incomes of the poorest families, which is the same as they spend on their healthcare. In the promo products industry, if we collectively try to reduce spending to appease and attract customers, we may actually ultimately pay a higher price if we inadvertently buy unsafe products. In the United States alone, there are 43,000 deaths and 40 million injuries a year associated with unsafe consumer products, with yearly costs of over $3,000 per person. 

“Governments must strive to continue and then succeed in their long-term mission of protecting their consumers, a mission of renewed relevance today,” said UNCTAD Secretary General Rebeca Grynspan at the organization’s intergovernmental meeting on consumer protection last month. Grynspan says keeping consumers safe should be a top priority for governments everywhere around the world. The UNCTAD research shows that when general safety and liability requirements are embedded in laws, those standards are the cornerstones of consumer product safety. Back in 2020, the UNCTAD adopted its first recommendation on product safety, aimed to curb the flow of unsafe products being traded internationally by strengthening ties among consumer product safety authorities and sensitizing businesses and consumers. That’s something everyone in the industry need to be more aware of — for yourselves and your clients — now more than ever.

“UNCTAD’s recommendation offers a huge potential for protecting consumers if implemented on a broad scale,” said Alexander Hoehn-Saric, chair of the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission. “By working together, we can improve product safety for all our consumers.” The risk comes when clients aren’t aware that health and safety requirements vary from country to country and may assume that all products on sale are safe. That’s where your expertise comes in, and can make a significant difference.

According to UNCTAD’s World Consumer Protection Map, 60% of countries lack experience in cross-border enforcement of consumer protection. When it happens like it should, it’s mainly spearheaded in developed countries first. UNCTAD research found that regional cooperation can actually result in catalyzing consumer protection. High-level officials that participated in the UNCTAD meeting agreed that preventing cross-border distribution of known unsafe consumer products should be a priority for all countries. It can both improve consumer confidence and at the same time boost sustainable economic development.

The inevitable question becomes: how to employ this information when talking about product safety with promotional product suppliers? The reality of our industry is that product safety is discussed far less than product cost. Many suppliers in our industry automatically equate safer products with higher costs, but it doesn’t have to be that way. Technological change can, in fact, lead to enhanced safety levels in a product if the changes involve innovations that actually decrease the costs of providing safer products at the same time. If the cost of providing a given level of safety decreases, then the supplier will almost magically find it efficient to improve the safety of the product as well. In an industry driven by margin, this level of thinking may seem too complex. But if you run across that thinking, as always, I suggest you try the old adage of “pay me now or pay me later” — for the costs of recalls, lawsuits, communication, and implementation of recalls, when added to the high cost of loss of goodwill can be incrementally higher than producing and insuring the delivery of safe products in the first place. And that’s an idea we should all get behind.