Recall when virtually everywhere you looked, all you saw was Barbie? In 2023, the year the blockbuster The Barbie Movie appeared in theater screens, doll-related content was ubiquitous. Across social media trends, Halloween costumes, and sky-high billboards of Margot Robbie’s perfect face, Barbie’s popularity reached new heights, captivating audiences and also generating the best box office receipts in all of Warner Brothers’ history. 

Yet Warner Brothers does not own Barbie; Mattel does. The toy company likely had anticipated the buzz that the movie would create for its products, considering how quick it was to capitalize on its success with new product introductions and tie-ins. As a result, the Barbie brand achieved 24 percent growth in the last quarter of 2023, enabling Mattel to announce impressive revenues overall. The company also gained an enviable, substantially improved financial position. 

Posting strong revenues is great, but Mattel also knows that sustaining such success requires additional strategic plans. The toy market overall also continues to be buffered by broader challenges, including the persistent difficulty of appealing to kids who are hooked on video games and smartphone applications. Therefore, Mattel has taken its newly expansive financial resources and invested them strategically. In particular, it has allocated substantial resources to overhauling its supply chain, seeking to make it more dynamic and responsive to shifting consumer tastes. In this process, Mattel shuttered some factories and indicated plans to eliminate some less popular brands; outsourced production of other product segments; and also consolidated the production process for its American Girl brand. 

By adopting these distinct and specific strategies for its different brands, Mattel gained new reserves of slack resources, which it could reassign to its most popular and profitable toy categories. The goal of this redesigned approach is to account for persistent and current trends, as well as seasonal market patterns. Of course, Barbie herself benefitted greatly from the restructuring. The brand remains the most popular doll property for Mattel and its second-most popular toy property overall. 

Beyond the production restructuring, Mattel indicated its openness to new partnerships with other toy brands, such as Hot Wheels, Fisher-Price, and Uno. Then, reflecting its recognition of the vast benefits that can result from successful movies, Mattel’s film subsidiary division announced its first animated film, featuring characters and storylines from Bob the Builder. Many other movies and television shows reportedly are in development, and why not? The success of The Barbie Movie gave Mattel a clear indication of the possibilities of leveraging its intellectual properties in various, creative ways.

Discussion Questions 

1. Can leveraging its existing intellectual property partnerships in film and television account for or ensure Mattel’s success in the long-term? Why or why not?
2. Is investing in supply chain redesigns an appropriate use of increased revenues? Where else could Mattel assign those monies?

Sources: Granth Vanaik, “Mattel’s Quarterly Loss Smaller than Expected as Cost Cuts Pay Off,” Reuters, April 23, 2024; Liz Young, “Taking a Lesson from Barbie, Mattel Builds a More Nimble Supply Chain,” The Wall Street Journal, October 13, 2024; Nate Delesline III, “After ‘Milestone Year’ Mattel Targets $200M In Cost Savings,” Retail Dive, February 9, 2024