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FORTUNE.COM // DECEMBER 2019
NOT HERE TO PLAY
Ynon Kreiz, Mattel’s
CEO since April 2018, at
company headquarters
in El Segundo, Calif.
Strategic missteps and bad luck have added up
to years of decline at toymaker Mattel.
Ynon Kreiz, the company’s fourth CEO since 2012,
is trying to flip the script—and counting on
Hollywood to play a starring role in its comeback.BY ADAM LASHINSKY
REWRITING A
ERE’S WHAT PASSES FOR GOOD NEWS these days at Mattel, the iconic
toymaker that has taken more knocks than one of its Rock ’Em
Sock ’Em Robots: a quarter of not losing money. In late October,
Mattel posted positive quarterly cash flow for the first time in three
years. It grew revenues for its second consecutive quarter, a feat it hadn’t
achieved since 2013. Even its long-troubled Fisher-Price tots division would
have reported single-digit year-over-year sales increases but for a $34 mil-
lion recall of nearly 5 million Rock ’n Play Sleepers feared to have caused
more than 30 infant deaths.
Some of Mattel’s news was good by any measure. Unlike arch rival Hasbro,
it isn’t being hit by tariffs imposed in the U.S.-China trade dispute, thanks
to savvy shipping arrangements with its buyers. Recent cost cuts enabled it
to raise its financial forecasts, sending its stock soaring (a rare occurrence of