Pirates in China Move Fast In Stealing New Toy Designs intriguing on multiple levels:
The fact that toy makers can face instant copies at toy fairs is the Catch-22 of the $11 billion-a-year business. Hong Kong’s proximity to the cheap but skilled labor base in China makes it a snap to duplicate a toy. The global toy industry is still looking for a fail-safe way to protect designs from Chinese copies without curbing its addiction to Chinese labor.Today, China makes 70% of the world’s toys and accounts for 49% of all counterfeit seizures in the U.S. by the Customs Service. Since China’s admission into the World Trade Organization, U.S. trade officials have prodded the nation to take firmer steps against design theft, which mires companies in costly copyright disputes and guts their ability to compete.
First, I knew that toys were big business, but $11 billion a year sounds really big to me. You’d think they’d put out better toys with that kind of money involved. Second, if renegade Chinese toymakers are going to crank out knockoffs of your product line, maybe you need to harness that somehow. Maybe you can leak your Stormtrooper action-figure design, so cheap armies are affordable. Then you charge a premium price for the name characters — who are now more fun to play with, since they can finally wade through an army of cannon fodder.