All Dolled Up

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Robert Eckert’s office looks like a toy store. As chief executive of Mattel, Eckert runs the world’s largest toy company, known widely for its iconic doll Barbie. But Eckert didn’t grow up in the toy industry. He spent most of his career at Kraft Food, where he started out marketing the food giant’s caramels, marshmallows and barbecue sauce. Eckert eventually became chief executive of Kraft for two and a half years. A chance meeting with Richard Ferry, founder of Korn/Ferry, prompted him to move his family to Southern California and take the helm at Mattel. His tenure hasn’t been easy. Barbie has been losing market share to competing fashion dolls, including the widely popular Bratz. What’s more, the company in 2007 recalled about 2 million toys that were contaminated with toxic lead. Eckert sat down with the Business Journal in his El Segundo office to talk about growing up in the Midwest, life at Kraft and how he’s cutting back during these rough economic times.


Question: Tell me about the legal tussle with Van Nuys toymaker MGA Entertainment over the Bratz fashion dolls. Would you say the dispute has become personal with MGA Chief Executive Isaac Larian?

Answer: It’s not personal against somebody, but it is personal in protecting Mattel’s interest, and protecting our employees and our shareholders. They deserve some compensation for something that somebody else did that wasn’t right.




Q: Does Mattel have plans to launch a new Bratz line for the 2010 season?

A: I don’t know what the end point is in the proceedings, but we have said to the court that if we ultimately prevail and have the property, then we are ready to go to work.


Q: Would Mattel be profiting from a product that MGA brought to market and turned into a successful franchise?

A: Somebody else may have brought it to market, but it was created here. That is no longer disputed. So I don’t have any problem with running a business that we’ve created, and I don’t think anybody else should either.


Q: Tell me about running a company in this economic climate.

A: This is as bad of an economy that I’ve ever seen. Fortunately, the toy industry tends to hold up relatively well in tough economic times. I think people sacrifice for themselves, but they don’t sacrifice much for their kids. It doesn’t mean it’s easy to do business in this environment, but there are a lot of people less fortunate than we are.


Q: Have you made some changes to offset the downturn?

A: We’ve reduced costs, we’ve reduced head count, and we’ve tightened things down as every business has had to do.



Q: Have you cut back personally?

A: I don’t know that I’ve really scaled back that much. But I used to get a new car every three or four years, and my car is now four and half years old and I’m not buying a new one. Is that because of the economy? I don’t know. I’m certainly influenced by what’s going on in the world. It’s a Mercedes, so it’s not a tough car to have to drive.


Q: The cost of running a business in California is prompting companies to move their headquarters out of the state. Have you ever thought of moving Mattel from El Segundo?

A: It’s always a tough decision to move headquarters because it’s not just moving people like me. It’s really moving the hundreds of designers who make these neat products. It would be very hard to pick all these people up and say, ‘Let’s go to some other state.’ But we are aware of the cost penalty of doing business in California as opposed to a neighboring state which is more business friendly. It is a cost-benefit analysis, and for us today, the benefit of staying outweighs the cost. But someday the cost could outweigh the benefit, and then we will have to pick up and go.


Q: Do you enjoy living in Southern California?

A: Yes, how does it get better? The people are substantially similar to the kinds of people I liked in the Midwest, basic core positive values in an environment that’s just a lot nicer. If it weren’t for the traffic, this would be ideal. But I can deal with the traffic.


Q: Where did you grow up?

A: I grew up in Elmhurst, Ill., which is a suburb of Chicago. If you have been to O’Hare Airport, it’s just south.


Q: What did your parents do?

A: My father was a dentist. He served in World War II. My mother worked as a receptionist and assistant for my father, and then retired to raise the kids. I had a very close relationship with both of my parents, but in particular my father. He was a very positive influence on my life. You hear about people who think that the glass is half-full or half-empty he was a glass half-full person.


Q: What was your childhood like?

A: It was a nice, suburban public school sort of childhood. I was always interested in work and business. So at a pretty young age, one of my first jobs was selling Amway products door-to-door. I was probably 13 or 14 years old. When I was old enough to get a legitimate job, I got a job at a clothing store in Elmhurst. I worked in the clothing store almost full time, so I would go to school in the morning and work in the afternoons and the evenings.


Q: How did you start at Kraft?

A: I was an associate marketing manager in charge of marketing research for Kraft caramels, marshmallows and barbecue sauce. Then I worked in salad dressings and I became the brand manager of salad dressings. And then I spent a lot of time, a good chunk of my career, around the cheese business.


Q: How did you work your way up?

A: When I was a young general manager of Kraft’s cheese division, the department was losing market share and profits. At the time, there was speculation that I was going to get fired. I came up with a plan to fix the problem and in the end got promoted.


Q: You served as the chief executive of Kraft for about two and half years. Had you planned to get that job?

A: I had a talented predecessor who had done a really nice job, but decided to move on. So surprisingly, I wasn’t planning on getting that job.



Q: What did you do as chief executive?

A: I focused on the institution because, at the time, we were integrating companies that we had acquired over the years into one culture, one system and one way to do business. We made pretty good progress on that.


Q: How did you land the Mattel job?

A: I got a call from a recruiter about the Mattel job, and I gave him a couple of other great names to pursue. When he called back he said, “You don’t get it, we really want to talk to you.” And I said, “Well, I’m not sure I’m interested in moving.”


Q: So, what happened?

A: I ended up meeting a recruiter, Richard Ferry of Korn/Ferry. Richard and I met at O’Hare for a couple of hours and I liked Richard because he talked about the Los Angeles community and the role of business in the community. That was consistent with how I viewed the world: A company does have an obligation to the community in which it resides. At the end of the conversation, he said: “You need to meet with a couple of directors at Mattel to talk about the Mattel opportunity.” The next thing you know, I’m talking to directors of Mattel. And the next thing you know, we decided that I should work here.


Q: How did the move from Illinois to Southern California affect your family?

A: One of my daughters was just about to enter high school. She had already been through orientation and stuff like that, and then we said, “Hey, we’re moving to California.” So it was a little hard on her.


Q: When you joined Mattel, what were some of the challenges that you faced?

A: At the time, Mattel was a company that was facing troubled times. The company was losing money at a pretty rapid pace and it was real cash money, so we needed to take some action and make some changes.


Q: What changes did you make?

A: In some cases, we changed how we do business, how we are organized and structured to become more efficient. We sold some businesses and pieces of businesses that didn’t fit in well with the company.


Q: What was that like?

A: Something like that is stimulating and intimidating. I remember sitting in my office every once in awhile in the first days thinking “Oh, my God, now what’s going to happen?”


Q: How do you manage the stress?

A: I run a little bit. I tend to think well when I run. I only run for a half-hour at a time, but I get my best work done while I’m running. There are occasions when something really problematic is happening at work, and I just need to think about something, and I put on my running stuff and I’ll go running. And when I come back, I will have thought it through.


Q: Did you do a lot of running when Mattel recalled nearly 2 million toys because of lead contamination in 2007?

A: I did more running. It was a trying time. This is a company that had worked very hard for decades to build up a reputation largely with parents you can trust Mattel and you can trust our products. It took a long time to build that reputation, and it can disappear in an instant. So, it was a tough time for the company and it was a challenging time for me as the leader of the company.


Q: How did you deal with the recalls?

A: You go back to the basic principles of just do the right thing. So, the first thing we did was apologize: I’m sorry that we ruined your day. Here’s what went wrong, and here’s what we are doing to make sure it won’t happen again. What I’ve learned in life is that people are forgiving if you are like that. They will move on, and people seemed to have moved on.


Q: When you leave Mattel, what do you want to have accomplished?

A: I’m hopeful that the institution will be a lot stronger. One of the things I’ve learned is there are two kinds of leaders. There are leaders who are more about them, their personality, and their charisma. Then there are leaders who are about the institution developing people, building brands and working in the community. And I absolutely believe that 60 days after I leave Mattel, nobody is going to remember who I was or what I did. But if Mattel is a stronger, better institution, that’s what I care about.


Q: Do you read a lot of books about leadership?

A: I do. I’ve studied leadership and I think it is something that can be learned. And it’s one of those things where there are thousands and thousands of books written, so you might as well read a couple of them.


Q: Do you have a favorite?

A: I happen to like a very simple work on leadership, John Wooden’s “Pyramid of Success.” It starts with your view of the world, into your personal traits and characteristics, and how you interact and work with other people. I happened to be at a UCLA dinner with John Wooden a couple of weeks ago, it was just another reminder that he’s still about the best leader you are ever going to run into.


Q: What is your favorite vacation spot?

A: This will be the 53rd consecutive year that we will be going camping in the same state park in Michigan. It started with my parents when I was kid. I was 2 years old, and we ended up at this one spot in Michigan where we met some other folks that we knew. It became a tradition. There are three or four core families and different generations of the families. It peaked at about 100 people, and now I think it’s around 50 or 60.


Robert Eckert

Title: Chief executive

Company: Mattel Inc.

Born: 1954; Elmhurst, Ill.

Education: B.S., University of Arizona; M.B.A., Northwestern University

Career Turning Point: Finding a solution to a problem with Kraft cheese when he was a young manager at the food company; he’d thought he was going to get fired, but got promoted instead

Most Influential People: Parents; Kraft executives he worked with

Personal: Lives in Palos Verdes with wife, Kathie, a retired marketing executive. They have four adult children.

Hobbies: Running, reading

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