Kikkerland Design - 2

Today I got another response from Kikkerland, this time from a VP. It said:

Dear Jared,

Thank you for your purchase of a Kikkerland Kitchen timer. We share your concerns and are taking steps to improve the accountability of our suppliers and are committed to reducing waste and improve the quality of our products and the environment.

We ask our suppliers to sign a commitment to not use forced or child labor and to use labor practices that conform to local laws.

At some of our larger suppliers we do factory inspections. Kikkerland will not knowingly buy from any suppliers, which violate this agreement.

We do not actively participate in local issues of the place of manufacture but try limit the harmful effects of our activities. We try to reduce waste by reducing packaging and using recyclable packaging such as paper and PET plastics wherever possible. We try to reduce pollution and save money by increasing the load factor of the containers we bring into the country.

We are also active in a reforestation project in Brazil Mil Fohas and just introduced a new line of notebooks, Writersblok, of which 2% of the proceeds will support NYC826 an organization that promotes literacy and creative writing skills in children in New York City.

We realize that this reply does not address all of your concerns. There remains a lot to be done. As we grow and our ability to address these issues grows we are committed to further reduce the harmful impact of our activities and motivate and encourage our suppliers to do their part as well.

Jeroen Kuiper

Kikkerland Design Inc.

Kikkerland is a smaller company, I think, and more agile in responding to customer inquiries. For that I'll give them credit. It's nice to know that they are active and conscientious about their business practices, thinking about the packaging they use, supporting reforestation and literacy projects. I'd like to see standards above and beyond "local laws", but then again I'm not familiar with Chinese labor law; it could be quite progressive. Overall I'm pretty pleased with their response. Given the choice between Kikkerland or other similar products, I'm going buy and be willing to pay more for Kikkerland stuff.