Barbie Dolls Essay

3670 Words15 Pages
International Business Chapter 14 Oxford University Press Prof. Rakesh Mohan Joshi Case Study BARBIE FACES ISLAMIC DOLLS Barbie, so named by ideator Ruth Handler after daughter Barbara s nickname, became the world s most popular fashion doll. Handler found that young girls enjoyed playing out their dreams in adult roles when she saw her daughter Barbara playing with a paper doll and imagining it as a grown up. Most children s dolls available at that time represented infants. This gave rise to an idea of a teenage doll, Barbie. Handler co-founded Mattel, a Southern California toy company with her husband Elliot Handler, and spearheaded the introduction of the doll. Barbie s physical appearance was modelled on the German Bild Lilli doll, a risqué gag gift for a man, based upon the cartoon character featured in the West German newspaper Bild Zeitung. Barbie made its debut in the American International Toy Fair in New York on 9 March, 1959. This date is also considered to be Barbie s official birthday. Barbie sells over 1 billion annually across 150 countries. It is estimated that three Barbie dolls are sold every second1. Although Barbie was positioned as the ultimate American girl, it was never manufactured in the US, primarily to avoid higher production costs. The first Barbie dolls were manufactured in Japan with their clothes hand-stitched by Japanese home-workers. In the first year of production, around 350,000 Barbie dolls were sold. The Mattel-owned four factories, two in China and one each in Malaysia and Indonesia 2, produce over 100 million Barbie dolls a year. However, a number of other companies produced Barbie-licensed products. The process of Barbie production is very complex, which includes shipping the dolls from one country to another for different processes. To illustrate, the United States ships the cardboard packaging, paint

More about Barbie Dolls Essay

Open Document