More than 50% of the physical toys produced by Hasbro are manufactured in China. This has placed Gi Joe and My Little Pony manufacturer directly in the sights of President Donald Trump’s turbulent war between the world’s two largest economies.
“In February, and then again in April, and then again, on each tweet after that, there was a material impact on how we thought about this $ 2 billion business,” said Gina Goetter, Hasbro’s financial director and director of operations during a Boston Consulting Group Boston Consulting event.
Your motto to answer has been simple: do not overdo it, operate based on facts and avoid analytical paralysis. And Goetter applies this thought to the way he responds internally in Hasbro and how he explains the company’s thinking to Wall Street investors as tariffs and contracts continue to evolve. “I found that the way we really anchor everyone is what we know at that moment and the decisions we are making at that moment,” said Goetter.
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Coes must face a level of economic uncertainty that could potentially be higher in the US than the great depression, the great recession of 2008-09 and the 2020 Covid pandemic, according to an economic policy uncertainty that researchers have monitored since 1900. But Goetter and his colleagues on the panel have agreed that many of the lessons they have learned about resilience can be applied to events. current geopolitics.
Laura Juliano, BCG’s administrative director and senior partner, said the consultancy encouraged customers to adopt scenario planning to better prepare their business as they face three major uncertainties today: geopolitical conflicts and tariffs; General -related generational changes; and technologies such as artificial intelligence and automation.
With scenario planning, companies can map the potential impacts they can face, regardless of whether tariffs are 5% or 200%. “We are finding that this is the best method to avoid deciding to stop, which tends to be the first reaction when this level of uncertainty arises,” said Juliano.
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Land O’lakes has adopted scenario planning and created a “war room” to understand how tariffs will impact the prices of supply products and chains, and how much the capital of the dairy cooperative will be affected. These are skills that Land O’Lakes developed during the pandemic, when supplies interruptions impacted prices for farmers, retailers and suppliers.
“We don’t have everything planned yet, but the war room is moved,” said Brett Bruggman, Land O’Lakes’ executive vice president and operations director. “It teaches our organization, or helps strengthen our organization, to be agile.”
Goetter stated that the action and a mindset of “without regrets” are necessary to face the moment. Even before the tariff wars began, Hasbro knew it was not wise to make so many products in China. CEO Chris Cocks has recently told CNBC that Hasbro intends to obtain about “40% of China’s global supply by the end of 2026. I believe we will achieve this goal long before.”
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Each Hasbro business division has a team dedicated to finding ways to diversify its production more quickly out of China.
“We also believe there is a role that the US could, and should play in Hasbro’s long -term manufacturing footprint,” said Goetter.
If more manufacturers followed the example, this could especially benefit companies such as Link Logistics, which was founded by the Blackstone investment company in 2019 as a last mile logistics operator, that is, the properties that store goods before the final delivery stage to consumers.
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“What we are starting to see in the central part of the country is more industry interest, more operators who are reinforcing the fact that they really believe we will bring the industry back to the US,” said Sonya Huffman, Link Logistics’s administrative director.
Huffman stated that business decisions are advancing rapidly, noting that in the second half of last year, outsourced logistics Asian companies – who take care of storage, inventory and transportation management to manufacturers – were renting a lot of warehouses on the west, predicting tariffs that would affect their products. “We saw a lot of products coming,” said Huffman. There is also less interest in signing long -term and multiannual warehouses leasing contracts due to constantly evolving business decisions.
She believed that devoting a long time for war rooms and scenario planning can have her disadvantages. “This leads us to think that no one is making decisions, everyone is distracted and how are we going to rent our space and make them stay?” Said Huffman.
The panel leaders also said they were aware of talent development trends. Juliano said that if more industries return to the US, companies will need to rethink how to hire and attract talent to this work. Generational trends are also a complicating factor.
“Can we say precisely how the alpha generation will want to interact with its employees?” Juliano asked. “No, but we know that generation Z is really changing things.”
Land O’Lakes improved its talent management approach, devoting more time to the joint development of career plans with the main talents, from directors to superior. “We try to engage and devote a disproportionate amount of time to talent,” said Bruggman.
Goetter said Hasbro historically does not prioritize guiding employees to think of work in the company as something more than a job, but as a place to develop a career. Leadership is investing more time in creating a culture in which employees better understand their career development plan.
“We recognize this as a gap,” said Goetter. “And we are working hard to implement some of these principles.”
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