Retail Product Safety Pros Meet For Day Of Benchmarking

02/28/2019

This week, RILA hosted over 70 members of the Association's Consumer Products Committee for a meeting in Washington, DC. The committee, comprised of quality assurance, sourcing, legal, and government affairs professionals from RILA member companies, meets twice a year for peer-to-peer benchmarking and discussions around shared product safety compliance challenges and industry trends. This year's event brought attendees from Five Below, Home Depot, J. Crew, Starbucks, Target, and more.

Kicking off the meeting, The Toy Association's SVP of Technical Affairs Alan Kaufman presented on lessons learned from navigating the state of Oregon's Toxic Free Kids Act process to be exempted from chemical reporting requirements, to see if it could potentially be replicated by RILA.

Attendees were also joined by Costco Product Safety Analysis & Reporting Supervisor Erin Bradley and Corporate Counsel Derek Snead, who shared a case study on the company's recently issued civil penalty issued by the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) and how they used that experience to improve their compliance program.

CPSC Commissioner Peter Feldman later engaged in a question and answer panel discussion moderated by RILA's Autumn Moore and Matt Howsare from Mitz Levin. Commissioner Feldman highlighted some of his priorities for his term at the commission, which include updating the agency's data streams and data analytics capabilities.

Wrapping up the meeting, Cory Anderson from the Retail Council of Canada provided an international perspective on product safety, with an update on the latest trends in Canada.

The meeting also featured several opportunities for benchmarking among retail industry peers on important topics in consumer product safety.

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