I would like to introduce you to our Toy suppliers. Selecting a supplier is a big deal for me! The 1st thing that come to my mind when looking at a new range of toys is, how is this working with the ethos and values of Mimitoys?
Are they good quality? What are the play values? Will parents or other adults engage with this toy and share fun moments with the children? Will it be loved and pre-loved in the long run?
I would also expect my suppliers to offer the same high-standard level of quality and customer service we want to offer our own customers.
We expect our Toy Suppliers to be reliable with their stock levels, a responsible attitude towards policies and procedures of manufacturing and a demonstration that play and the values of play are at heart of their business.
So I contacted all my existing toy suppliers and gathered here some information.
Alphabet Jigsaws
Designed in Ireland, all Alphabet Jigsaws puzzles are cut from sustainably sourced wood and painted by hand in dazzling colours, using non-toxic acrylic paints.
The puzzles are produced and painted by hand with the same family for the last twenty five years. The family and workshop is in a rural part of Sri Lanka amidst rice paddies and tea plantations. Over the twenty five years they have forged an incredibly close relationship with the family, based on trust and the mutual desire to produce an exciting range of beautiful and unique jigsaw puzzles many with an Ireland or Irish language theme.
Bigjigs
Bigjigs is a UK company founded by husband and wife team Liz and Peter Ireland in 1985. They are both teachers by profession where child development and education is always at the heart of their fabulous toy range. They work closely with a number of toy production facilities in the Far East who are regularly visited by Liz. Liz takes great care to ensure that the facilities are operating ethically and are committed to a consistent quality that has been built up over many years.
Bigjigs have a range of mostly wooden toys where wood is farmed environmentally. The majority of their wooden toys are manufactured from Rubberwood. Rubberwood is a byproduct of the latex production process (I think latex is used for soft rubber items like surgical gloves, rubber bands, balloons etc). Rather than the wood being discarded at the end of its useful “latex producing” life, it is used in their toy production. It is a solid hardwood, perfect for producing quality, hard-wearing toys.
No chemicals are adhered onto the wood and the toys are finished with child-friendly paints, stains and lacquers. In turn their range passes stringent safety testing guidelines regarding these surface coverings.
Buitenspeel
Buitenspeel make all their current range of (mostly outdoor) games with FSC wood (sustainable forest farming values). 15 of their games are made with partly recycled materials. They also use recycled material for their packaging without the use of any plastic – this means previous container bags that were plastic are now substituted with cardboard or paper alternatives.
One of their lines uses tin cans – where the toy is utterly robust, allowing those toys to be handed from from child to child and family to family.
Toy Supplier | Buittenspeel | Mimitoys 2023
GreenToys eco-Friendly Toys
GreenToys are made in the USA from 100% recycled material mainly plastic milk jugs and sometimes yogurt cups! These plastic toys contain no BPA, PVC, Phthalates or external coatings. The toys are packaged in recycled and recyclable materials with no plastic films or twist ties, and are printed with soy inks.
Janod
Janod is a brand committed to improving its environmental impact. 25% of the products in the JANOD wood and cardboard collection are FSC® certified. Their goal is to reach 70% by 2025! To fill that time gap they plant an enormous amount of trees eg 4500 trees were planted in 2019
The FSC®* certification system is an environmental ecolabel which ensures that wooden products come from responsibly managed forests. As a result, it guarantees the legality of the resource’s exploitation and the absence of any links to deforestation, in addition to biodiversity conservation.
Janod Puzzles use no plastic packaging.
Kaloo and Lilliputiens
Kaloo and Lilliputiens were recently acquired by Janod. Both brands use recycled polyester stuffing (obtained from recycled plastic bottles) for their soft toys and comforters
The stuffing is GRS-compliant (Global Recycled Standard) and certified by the Control Union body.
Toy Supplier | Lilliputiens | Mimitoys 2023
Djeco
Djeco’s environmental policy focuses on 3 main areas:
Firstly they have massively reduced their packaging. 95% of their collection is now sold without overwrap film. Plastic packaging has been replaced with a paper equivalent or cardboard wedges.
Secondly their raw materials are sourced from sustainable sectors. They use FSC-certified wood and cardboard in their toy manufacture. All their cardboard products are printed with vegetable inks.
Lastly they part manufacture close to their Paris France base. This means less marine fuel is used to get their toys from their French factories to their Paris warehouses. Therefore, they manufacture quite a lot from within the EU. For example, the gift bags Mimitoys send free with every order is manufactured in world state of the art facilities in Spain. For toys coming from the far east, Djeco uniquely transport 50% of their toys (target 100% by 2025) with ships that use LNG (liquefied natural gas) – this has positive environmental impact in that LNG ships emit 99% less sulphur dioxide and 20% less Carbon Dioxide when compared against ships that use oil engines.
Kapla
Kapla manufacture stacking planks. They exclusively use pine sourced within their French county (Landes) from sustainably managed forests. The wood is natural and untreated, and the coloured planks are dyed using food-grade colouring to ensure safe play. Their manufacturing process includes a series of strict checks and standards, as well as a final manual sorting, to provide quality planks that last years. As proof, we started Mimitoys in 2004 and as a family we still have a collection of perfectly good Kapla planks in a drawer somewhere (in the spare room!!!) from that period.
Le Toy Van
The famous manufacturer of the best and most colourful Dollhouses in Ireland. Le Toy Van toys are all wood, the dollshouses themselves are made from a fiber board, whereas furniture and dollhouse characters are mostly full timber.
Le Toy Van only use FSC certified wood for the fiber board and Indonesian Legal Rubberwood (see latex description above).
Le Toy Van is serious in pointing out that they progress ethical production methods. They work closely with three factories across China and Indonesia. Each factory is approved by the ICTI Ethical Toy Programme Certification, that supports the rights and well-being of these workers.
With regards to the use of plastic, they are pledged to remove 100% of plastic from packaging by 2023.
Legler
Legler work hard to continuously reduce their environmental footprint. They have a number of impactful initiatives.
Firstly they recognise that wooden toys often outlast a single childhood and can be handed down. This is my argument at the start of this blog.
Part of their Toy production assortment carries the FSC® seal (FSC®C138595). The wood materials used in the production of these toys come from sustainably managed forests or plantations which are regularly and independently inspected and certified in accordance with the strict international guidelines of the Forest Steward Council (FSC®).
Then Legler’s shipping is carbon neutral. They ship with DHL exclusively on DHL’s “GoGreen” campaign, where DHL calculates its Carbon emissions in its transport methods and offsets that carbon through either buying carbon credits or engaging in other carbon capturing projects
Legler’s headquarters is fully powered by company-owned photovoltaic panels that use the sun as an electricity source.
An interesting perspective is that they save energy and shipping space thanks to the smallest amount of outer packaging possible. This makes sense and has impact.
Additionally they are a Climate Partner at Virunga National Park in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Where locals are provided with electricity via a small run-of-river power station. This spurs local economic growth and replaces charcoal production within the national park. Charcoal production is notoriously tree hungry, so this initiative not only produces electricity (where previously there was none) but significantly reduces the amount of trees cut down to make the charcoal, which in turn helps preserve valuable living space for animals, including some of the last wild mountain gorillas (www.climatepartner.com/1072). Legler also financially support the NABU project “Oceans Without Plastic”.
Moulin Roty
Moulin Roty do an oh-so-cute range of soft and plush toys. They select most of their fabrics in Europe for their creativity and their technical quality, as well as their non-toxicity (the majority are tested by suppliers following the system of reference Oeko-Tex).
They work with factories and workshops that are selected with the greatest care, situated in Romania and France, as well as in China and Taiwan. These factories are above all partners with whom they have a long lasting relationship.
The Puppet Company
Puppet design is in the UK. The puppets themselves are manufactured in the Far East in factories that are visited by them to ensure that workers’ conditions are of the highest standards.
The Puppet Comapny has strict environmental and ethical trading policies in place. Generally, they efficiently consume water, energy and other natural resources.
In the production process they use non-toxic products, for example the puppets when requiring colour use VOC-free paints and the cleaning products used in the production process are in turn biodegradable.
In the transport of finished puppets they use sustainable transport methods wherever possible.
Sentosphere
Sentosphere is made in France with 80% of its raw materials in turn coming from France. That means low transport distances from supplier to the Sentosphere factory.
Their toy boxes are made of 100% of recycled cardboard and are FSC certified. Many of their toys have small plastic paint pots – all these containers are made of 100% recycled materials. Lastly their toy box packaging are as compact and small as possible to reduce needless cardboard use.
New Classic Toys are wooden toys designed in the Netherlands and made in China.
They use different kinds of woods to produce their toys. Some of their toys even carry the FSC seal. The wood materials used in the production of these FSC-certified toys come from sustainably managed forests or plantations which are regularly and independently inspected and certified in accordance with the strict international guidelines of the Forest Steward Council (FSC). All the New Classic Toys are EN71 certified.
Toy Supplier | New Classic Toys | Mimitoys 2023
Eitech® toys are Made in Germany by Eichsfelder Technik eitech GmbH.
The in-house production of their metal construction sets allows maximum safety standard. The components made of high-quality sheet steel from EU origin to create products that last as long as possible. Due to the composition and development of the individual parts, they can be combined almost infinitely and can therefore always be reused – over generations. For surface finishing, they use zinc electroplating, which is harmless to health, instead of the usual nickel plating. All plastic parts are produced by Eitech and contains no BPA, PVC, Phthalates or external coatings. The toys are packaged in recycled and recyclable materials. All of the Eitech® toys are EN71 certified. Eitech’s principle is to take environmental aspects into account in all sub-processes and to rely on suppliers that are as regional as possible.
Toy Supplier | Eitech | Mimitoys 2023
Teifoc Construction
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If you have enjoyed reading this article then you might be interested in another blog I wrote about How to reduce waste, protect the environment and be sustainable as a toy business?