Mattel fires over 2,000 employees and shuts down plant in Mexico

The North American toy manufacturer Mattel , known for producing the Barbie doll and other popular toys, will sell its plant in Mexico and reduce 22% of its workforce worldwide , which is equivalent to 2,200 jobs .

According to the president of the firm, Ynon Kreiz , the company has great potential and they see many opportunities, but there has been a great discrepancy between their financial performance in recent years and where they should be.

The company, with headquarters in El Segundo (California) , issued a statement explaining the measures to be implemented upon defficient results in their second quarter, which showed a 29% increase in overall loses and a 14% decrease in sales .

"While the industry is evolving, the toy market continues to grow, and we should be able to reverse our own trends given our solid prestige and the quality of our assets," he said in a statement.

In this sense, he explained that they are in a change of trend and, as expected, had a challenge for the second quarter, driven mainly by the liquidation of Toys'R'Us.

However, they observed continued performance from Barbie and Hot Wheels , and made substantial progress in their Structural Simplification program to restore profitability and improve productivity.

"Our goal is to transform Mattel, a high-performance, IP-driven toy company and I am confident that we have the right equipment, the right assets and the right strategy to achieve this and improve our long-term shareholder value," added Kreiz.

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