Toymaker Game to Bring Staff to HQ in El Segundo

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At the end of last year, there were fewer leftover Barbie dolls and other Mattel Inc. toys gathering dust in the back rooms of retail stores. It was a sign the company did a better job of predicting how many toys big retailers would sell.

Mattel executives said that improvement came thanks to last year’s creation of a new North America division, which the company is growing and consolidating at its El Segundo headquarters.

The company announced last week that it will move 100 positions within the division to El Segundo from the New York state offices of Mattel unit Fisher-Price. The division is tasked with working more closely with U.S. and Canadian retailers on promotions, marketing and inventory management.

“We just made the decision to consolidate everyone in one place,” Mattel spokesman Alan Hilowitz said. “We want to be more efficient.”

Employees at Fisher-Price offices in New York and East Aurora, N.Y., near Buffalo, were notified about the move May 22. Some employees will be laid off, though many others can keep their positions if they move to Southern California.

Mattel has high hopes for the North America division, which aims to increase sales and efficiency in the company’s American and Canadian operations as well as free up other resources to focus on overseas markets.

Before the division was created last year, Hilowitz said sales, marketing and relationships with retailers in North America were mostly handled by teams responsible for new product development.

In a Feb. 1 conference call with investors, Chief Executive Bryan Stockton said product development teams can now focus more on increasing sales in international markets.

“We’d like (international) to become about 60 percent of our overall revenue,” Stockton said. “And to do that, frankly, we needed to spend more time and attention with our brand groups outside of the U.S.”