Follow the Money: The journey of a $30 toy from China to America
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This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. Aitoa kansainvälistä markkinatunnelmaa. Pall nähtävää ja koettavaa koko perheelle. Tällä viikolla keskiviikosta sunnuntaihin kansainväliset suurmarkkinat Helsingin senaatin torilla. Tervetuloa! Eurooppamarkkinat.fi Asioita, joista on epävarma. Onko nyt hyvä hetki muuttaa uusiin tiloihin? Entäs sitten, kun markkina taas kääntyy? Tarvitaanko me enemmän tilaa etätyölle, lähityölle, hybridille? No, sitten asioita, joista olen varma. Meidän olisi hyvä vuokrata tilat sellaiselta, joka on varmaa. Kun ajat ovat epävarmat, mitä jos vuokranantaja olisi varma? Niinpä. Kysy toimitilaa alan suositelluimalta vuokranantajalta toimitilat.varma.fi.
I'm in a toy shop and I'm holding a box of brightly coloured plastic. Now if you turn it over, you'll always find the same three words made in China. This same box is on the shelf in Lagos, in Manila, in Sao Paulo and San Francisco, where it sells for around $30. About a third of the world's toys come out of one corner of one Chinese province. Most of us think we know the reason for that is cheap labour. But that changed about three decades ago. I'm Sam Fennec. This is Business Daily from the BBC World Service. And on Follow the Money This Week, you paid $30 for a toy. Where did the money actually go? On Thursday, China's President Xi Ji Ping is expected to arrive in Washington for meetings with Donald Trump.
Unsurprisingly, trade and tariffs will be top of the agenda. This year's Christmas toys are already on their way to the shops, so whatever those two men agree, it's too late to change the price of what's inside those shipping containers. Nearly eight in every ten toys imported into the United States comes from China, and for Christmas goods that percentage is even higher, around eighty-five percent. Which is why when the tariffs came in last year, the American president had an answer for everyone worried about the toy in the aisle.
Somebody said, Oh, the shelves are gonna be open. Well, maybe the children will have two dolls instead of thirty dolls, you know? And maybe the two dolls will cost a couple of bucks more than they would normally.
Fewer dolls, try explaining that to a toddler on Christmas morning. The toy industry threw its toys out of the pram. One toy maker took the government to court over the tariffs and won. But it didn't stop the toys from arriving at US ports. What it did do was change the price of them. There are four links in a toy's journey to a child. The factory in southern China that makes it, the ship and the border it crosses, the brand that puts it on the shelf. And the ever changing tariffs imposed by the White House and challenged by the industry. Our chain starts in a place most of us have never heard of. This is Dongguan in Guangdong Province in southern China. Here workers are popping little plastic figures what look like pigs out of a mould.
Thousands of them are being placed into big crates ready for painting. The factory is run by My Hawks. It makes plastic toys. Some have got electronics inside them, and according to them, about half of their customers are American, while 30% are Japanese. I spoke to its founder, Stella. Yan on a video call. Behind her is a cabinet full of their toys. Melanie Wang from her sales team did the talking.
After we get requests from our customer, we get design from them. We can make the 3D drawing for them. And after confirm our drawings, then we will make the prototype for them. And uh we will ship in this prototype to them to confirm it. And we will make a mode for the toys. And after confirmed it we will production these toys for our customers.
What does a $30 toy look like on the shelf and why does it say “Made in China”?
The mold is a steel tool that the hot plastic is forced into. Every part of a toy needs its own mold. Melanie grabs a small light up one from the cabinet behind her that alone needs six molds. The lead time is about one month of for injection mold. That's just the mould. So how long from someone's idea to make a toy that is then sold in the shops?
And this is about one to two years.
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