Benefits of Membership

The BTHA

Founded in 1944, the British Toy & Hobby Association is the official organisation representing manufacturers for Britain's £1.7 billion toy market. The Association promotes the highest standards of safety and quality in the manufacture of toys, games and playthings.

No manufacturer is admitted to membership unless he /she undertakes to manufacture products in accordance with the relevant EN71 standards and is able to satisfy the Association's toy safety advisor of a commitment to a safe manufacturing process. The Code of Conduct also requires members to commit to responsible practices on both marketing to children and environmental issues to best reflect members' commitment to good practice

The BTHA represents the interests of the toy industry on a national and international level, addressing issues and commercial problems which could have a profound effect on the toy business. In Brussels the BTHA takes a leading role in European discussions and decision making through its active membership of TIE and other European working committees, ensuring that the UK's toy industry is at the forefront of international affairs.

The BTHA secretariat in London is headed by the Director General, Roland Earl and seven staff. The activities of the Association are directed by Council, elected annually. The Council, in turn, is supported by the work of four committees (Toy Safety; Public affairs and relations; Toy Fair; the Toy Trust charity) whose members are drawn from the Council, as well as the wider membership, all of whom have specialist knowledge of their committee's working area.

The Department of Trade and Industry (now known as the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills) has described the BTHA as "one of the best organised bodies of its kind in the country".

If you are involved in toy manufacturing, the BTHA is well placed to represent your interests.

The Advantages of Membership

• Protection of business interests
• Help and advice from the secretariat on any industry-related issues
• Representation at all parliamentary and EU levels
• Toy safety consultancy
• Public relations support for the industry and allied issues
• The opportunity to enjoy a variety of special events and social occasions and consequent networking potential
• The benefit of linkage with the charitable activities of the Toy Trust
• "Briefing" e-mail newsflash service and important website guidance documents
• Membership information services
• Listing on www.btha.co.uk website
• Free "Top Toys" listing on the BTHA consumer website
• Use of the Association's Lion Mark toy safety symbol
• Discount on space taken at the Toy Fair

Read on to find out more

National Issues and International Liaison

            

National Partnerships - The BTHA, over many years, has forged strong relationships with key government departments to try to ensure fair and reasonable regulation for the conduct of the business of members. It is active in its relations with government in both Westminster and Brussels on matters affecting the toy industry and encourages dialogue with government organisations, opinion formers and key groups that affect the climate for the toy industry.

In addition, the BTHA recognises the importance of maintaining good links with related organisations and those opinion formers with an interest in children, safety, marketing of toys and sustainability.

Organisations such as the Child Accident Prevention Trust and the National Association of Toy & Leisure Libraries are important to the work of the BTHA and a working group, the National Toy Council, brings key organisations together, informally, on a regular basis.

The National Toy Council provides a forum for discussion about toys and children, sharing the knowledge and experience of the diverse range of members. A series of publications on toys and children have been published by the National Toy Council.

The Trading Standards Institute is extremely important to the BTHA and the wider toy industry. The BTHA places a strong emphasis on working closely with Trading Standards to create a fair, well regulated market place.

Europe - The BTHA has taken major steps to ensure that there is efficient and effective representation for members in Europe. The BTHA was instrumental in the formation of Toy Industries of Europe (TIE) which was established as a European toy lobbying group in Brussels, of which the BTHA is still an active member. For instance, in the past year the Association, through its membership of TIE, has taken an active part in the revisions to the Toy Safety Directive.

Membership of the BTHA also ensures effective representation on international toy safety committees. Members of the Toy Safety and Technical Matters committee are active in European safety groups and have been successful in creating working safety documents which have been adopted by the European Commission for use throughout the EU.

Global - The BTHA is an active member of the International Council of Toy Industries (ICTI), with a BTHA director sitting on the ICTI Board of Directors. This group meets at least once a year to discuss global toy issues and to swap best practice to ensure members of associations around the globe are trying to achieve the highest standards possible for their
membership.

ICTI also oversees the ICTI CARE Process - The CARE (Caring, Awareness, Responsible, Ethical) Process is the International Council of Toy Industries' (ICTI) programme to promote ethical manufacturing, in the form of fair labour treatment, as well as employee health and safety, in the toy industry supply chain worldwide. Its initial focus is in China, where 70 percent of the world's toy volume is manufactured. Its intent is to provide a single, fair, thorough and consistent programme to monitor toy factories' compliance with ICTI's Code of Business Practices.

The Date Certain Program is an integral part of the ICTI CARE Process. This is a programme to obtain commitments from toy brands and retailers that, as of a specific, future date ("Date Certain"), buyers will only contract product manufactured by factories that are in the ICTI CARE Process. Date Certain companies commit themselves to buy only from factories that are in the ICTI CARE Process and either have a Seal of Compliance or have completed the first audit and have agreed to a Corrective Action Plan to address the identified violations, if any. The BTHA is committed to the date certain programme from 1st January 2011. Membership of the association shows commitment to the ethical manufacture of toys through the ICTI date certain programme.

Toy Safety

For all members safety enquiries email safety@btha.co.uk
Toy Safety is the first priority of the BTHA and the Association strives to support its members in attaining the high safety standards expected of a responsible toy industry.
One of the main roles of the BTHA is to help ensure toy safety and toy business go hand in hand. The BTHA does this in three ways;

• We work hard to try to stop unworkable legislation negatively affecting the way you are able to conduct your business
• We utilise industry expertise from within member companies to break down new legislation into understandable information and guidance documents.
• We provide safety advice to keep you up-to-date with all the latest information via; safety advisory calls, visits, conferences and newsflashes

The Lion Mark - Full membership of the BTHA gives members the ability to use the Lion Mark on packaging for toys for the U.K. market. The Lion Mark continues to be an important, easily identifiable mark for trading standards officers as well as the public at large in identifying a member of the BTHA and the associated adherence to the BTHA's Code of Practice, notably in terms of product safety (but also in other areas such as ethical marketing practices, for instance). The Lion Mark was launched in 1988 and is a unique consumer safety quality mark for toys.

Safety Advisory Service - All members of the BTHA have access to a confidential safety advisory service which can help with safety related issues.

In the first instance the service allows you to ask, free-of-charge, about any safety issue over the telephone and our safety advisors will help with your query in a confidential and sympathetic environment. The free telephone service is there to answer general safety enquiries or issues you may have come across during the course of your business. There is a limit to the amount of advice that we can offer and the type of advice that can be offered without detailed knowledge of the product or trading conditions. The advisory service would be able to point members in the right direction and answer straightforward questions, limited to a few questions per year for each member. However where the advice becomes consultancy, which would require product samples or a more lengthy discussion, we suggest the subsidised consultancy offer detailed below or suggest you discuss the costs of independent consultancy offered by consultancy services.

Subsidised Detailed Toy Safety Consultancy - New for 2010 - In addition to the free telephone service the BTHA recently expanded the advisory service to offer members a more detailed level of advice.

The BTHA will subsidise a visit by one of our safety advisors to come to your offices and help with any technical advice on your products. The cost for the day would normally be £400 plus expenses, however the BTHA will subsidise the visit by £200 to ensure you have low-cost access to safety advice as you need it. Visits are limited to two visits per member per year as availability of experts allow.

Safety Newsflashes - Members will be kept up-to-date on the latest safety information via our regular safety newsflashes which will direct you to new information on the ‘members-only' and ‘public area' safety pages of the BTHA website. Once you are a member you can email the BTHA to ensure your in-house safety advisor is sent these updates directly, simply email the BTHA to let us know their contact details; safety@btha.co.uk.

Safety Pages of the BTHA website - The BTHA has created a new Members-Only section of the website which only members of the BTHA have access to. Before legislation and compliance guidelines are published on the public safety pages of the website, we give members early advice on potential issues through the member pages. This new Members-Only area also allows members to ask questions of our safety experts and offer feedback to the BTHA on issues that need lobbying or addressing.
Once guidance / legislation are finalised they are transferred to the general safety pages of the website (work of the BTHA section) so that retailers and other partners can access the information to try to encourage the whole industry to work to the same recommended industry guidelines.

Toy Safety Expertise - The BTHA retains a number of toy safety experts to keep up-to-date on the latest developments and to give advice to the membership. These experts work with a wider field of toy safety specialists from the BTHA membership through the BTHA's Toy Safety and Technical Matters Committee (TSTM). They also meet regularly with advisors from the wider industry.
The group meets four times a year as a full committee and smaller working groups meet between these times to cover specialist subjects. Many of the members are specialists in their field and represent the wider toy industry in discussions, helping to develop the key toy safety standards through various working groups, both inside and outside the BTHA.
The work of the TSTM is fed back into the European Union and into other associations and key stakeholder groups (such as Toy Industries of Europe, the International Council of Toy Industries, the Trading Standards Institute and the Department of Business, Innovation and Skills (formerly BERR/DTI)) to ensure the BTHA has a voice during discussions on toy safety issues that will effect members.
One of the committee's main roles is to develop guidance for BTHA members and to highlight potential upcoming issues for consideration. Once an upcoming issue has been highlighted the committee establishes the best experts to look into the subject and to draw up working guidelines to help standardise the response to the issue and clarify the toy industry's position.
Published guidance documents are made available in the public area of the website to ensure as many people as possible have access to the information to try to ensure there is one standard way of conforming to an issue that all stakeholders can accept, including members, retailers, trading standards officers, laboratories, etc.

Crisis support - The BTHA is available to all members during times of crisis to try to help with advice on any issues. The BTHA is in the process of developing helpful advice on recall procedures, and advice, from a specialist organisation, will also be available on this topic at the Regional Members Meetings during 2010.

BTHA Standards Service - FREE access to selected product Standards from BSI - New for 2010 - During 2010 the BTHA will be launching a new service to members. The BTHA will be able to offer members view-only access to standards via the British Standards Online system. This service allows you to access them for free and will be launched in the spring of 2010.
You are able to visit BSI online to view a list of up to 150 selected product standards that cover toys (please be aware that these will be available to view online but will not allow you to download or print the documents). The list of accessible standards in the BTHA subscription should cover the majority of members' needs for Toys, Nursery and related electrical items. In addition to the standards members can set themselves up for e-mail notifications when standards change which will help to meet legal requirements relating to monitoring and using the latest product standards.

Sustainability

During the course of 2009 a number of sustainability guidance documents have been developed for members. These are available through the Members-Only area of the BTHA website.
Quick Reference Guide to Sustainable Toy Packaging - The first of these is a quick reference guide to toy packaging to give members easy to follow tips on how to start reducing their packaging in order to reduce waste and save money! It gives background information to consider when applying sustainability design principles; lists 10 rules to follow if there is no time for anything else; and provides a list of questions and considerations for each stage of the supply chain.
Design Tips for Sustainable Packaging - This document outlines a set of design tips for sustainable packaging specifically for the Toy Industry. It is a guidance document aimed at everyone involved in the toy industry supply chain, especially, designers, quality, environment, and marketing managers. It is not exhaustive, but targets keys issues in specifying and designing toy packaging. The guide is split into two main parts. Firstly, information about packaging and print that sets the context for why eco-packaging design is important from a consumer, technical and legal perspective. The guide also includes a structured series of prompts that can be used in design and buying meetings to consider the environmental opportunities for your company.

Footprinting & Sustainability Decision Making Tool - New for 2010 - Over the coming months the BTHA are working with sustainability consultants to develop a sustainability decision making tool which will guide members in their toy material choices at design level. The tool will aid decision making and calculate the carbon footprint of product. The carbon data can be used for establishing cumulative savings emanating from design decisions. The output data will be standardised and comparable across the toy industry. The decision making tools will be available to members from summer 2010.

Sustainability Workshop - All members are welcome to attend the FREE Regional Member Meetings which will take place during 2010. Sustainability consultants, Giraffe, will undertake one of the sessions during the day as a workshop. They will give an overview of the current issues and train members of the Decision Making Tool.

Events
For all events enquiries email eventsenquiries@btha.co.uk

Toy Fair and the Industry Awards - The BTHA runs an annual trade event at Olympia Exhibition Centre, West London, in January each year. It is the only dedicated toy trade event in the UK calendar and attracts exhibitors from small innovative start-up companies to some of our largest members. Visitors cover the spectrum of toy retailers in the UK, as well as other industry partners including licensors and inventors.

Members are entitled to a discount for the Toy Fair as long as they are accepted into membership by the BTHA Council meeting in the Spring of the previous year. The discount works out at a little over 20% of the normal space rate.

At the end of the first day of Toy Fair the industry comes together to celebrate the best of the business at the annual Industry Awards Evening. Organised with the Toy Retailers Association, the awards evening includes drinks, dinner and the presentation of awards to the best retailers and suppliers of the year as well as recognition of individuals who have made a special contribution to the toy industry with the presentation of Golden Teddies. All members are welcome to attend the event; tickets are available from November.

AGM / Industry Day - Members are encouraged to attend the Annual General Meeting which takes place in June each year. To make the visit even more worthwhile the BTHA organises an Industry Day for the remainder of the day. In conjunction with the Toy Retailers Association a programme of speakers and networking opportunities are organised for members to meet guests from all aspects of the industry. Details are sent out at the end of April.

Regional Member meetings - New for 2010 - The BTHA will hold three regional meetings for members during July 2010. They will take place in Leeds (7th July), Birmingham (14th July) and the South East (21st July). They will offer practical advice to members of topics such as sustainability, product recalls, the new toy safety directive and how to protect intellectual property. All members are welcome to attend these FREE workshops; simply contact the events team at the BTHA.

The Toy Trust

Membership of the Association brings you into the Toy Trust community. The Toy Trust is the toy industry's charity (administered by the BTHA). The Toy Trust charity committee brings together representatives from across the whole of the industry to raise money for deprived or disadvantaged children. Support comes from suppliers, retailers, licensors and media partners as well as from the industry's trade magazines. All members are welcome to take part in the Toy Trust activities which raise an average of £200,000 per year for children's causes. They are also a fantastic opportunity for networking or team building.

During 2010 the main event will be the ‘Big Kids Alternative Triathlon'. This takes place on 5th June at Rutland Water. Members can enter a team to take part in a run, cycle ride and a raft race. The day ends with an award for the wining team, a hog roast and a chance to catch up with friends from across the industry.

Another fundraising activity is the annual media auction, which takes place in the run up to, and during, the awards dinner. Children's media channels donate airtime or catalogue slots for the industry to bid for.

An annual Golf Day takes place during the Spring each year and ToyNews organise a 5-a-side football tournament on behalf of the Toy Trust during the summer.

For more information on the Toy Trust contact the BTHA events team; eventsenquiries@btha.co.uk.

Other Advice and Support from the Secretariat

Legal advice - The BTHA's solicitors, DLA Piper, offer a FREE telephone service for members who have general legal queries. The service is for issues that need a quick response. During 2010 the solicitors will be offering guidance on the Member-Only section of the BTHA website on common enquiries such as intellectual property rights. (Please note; more detailed legal advice may incur a fee which will be discussed before any work is done).

General Advice and Representation - The Association has also taken a close interest in other areas such as responsible marketing communications practice under the self-regulatory system. There are other areas too where the Association endeavours to ensure the interests of members are properly represented such as with government-backed enquiries in such areas as ‘commercialisation and childhood' and to highlight the responsible nature of the BTHA membership, as you would expect. Our ever-evolving Code of Conduct tries to keep ahead of the issues.

Public relations work - The BTHA works to highlight the importance of play and toys in child development - through the media and relevant third parties. This is an active programme, as well as responding to numerous requests from the media. In 2009 we had a major value of play conference, with a host of academics speaking to an audience of members and influential third parties about the importance of toys and play and during 2010 the BTHA will be developing a campaign to promote the benefits of play to children and their parents.

Publications and Promotion - The BTHA produces a number of leaflets on the benefits of play. It is an active member (and administrator) for the National Toy Council which also produces leaflets for consumers on toys and play. During 2010 the BTHA will be working with an educationalist (in association with the relevant authority) to produce a series of leaflets giving advice on the best forms of toys and play for children with special needs. The BTHA's well used guide to the toy industry has gone online and is available free of charge to those looking for information and contacts in the industry.

Information Updates - Members have access to all areas of the BTHA website and all the advice that is located throughout the various online areas. Members are also sent regular newsflashes on issues that are of importance to the toy industry. For 2010 the BTHA Sourcebook has gone online, ensuring as many people as possible have free access to valuable industry information.

FREE Toy listing on BTHA website - Members are able to list their own toys on the Consumer Section of the BTHA website. These listing change four times a year to suit seasonal variations. Members can manage their own listing and uploading of toys through the Members-Only Area of the website and will be sent alerts to remind them to alter the toys throughout the year.

Members-Only Area of the BTHA website - Membership of the Association allows access to the ever-growing Members-Only area of the BTHA website. This area contains information on sustainability advice and early safety advice and guidance. During 2010 this area will also have a link to the BSI Standards and advice from the BTHA lawyers giving guidance on frequently asked toy industry queries.

Conference facilities - A meeting room, at the BTHA premises in London, is available, free of charge, to all members, situated close to Westminster and the City. The meeting room is located in the Library on the second floor with stair access only.

The meeting room contains a board room table which holds up to eight people. A projector and screen are available and refreshments can be provided. Please call the membership secretary to reserve or book this meeting facility.

For more information on any of these services or to talk to a member of the British Toy and Hobby Association secretariat call 020 7701 7271 or email admin@btha.co.uk.