In response to the growing safety concerns surrounding the hoverboard industry, more than 100 Chinese companies in the industry have come together to form a trade association, the Hoverboard Industry Alliance, which held its second conference on March 3, according to Quartz.
The group plans to work with Underwriters Laboratories Inc. and the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) to create and enforce standards for the hoverboard industry. The group is planning on meeting with a CPSC representative this week.
More than 500 factories in China manufacture hoverboards. In a rush to fill orders, some manufacturers sold hoverboards that weren’t up to product-safety standards. As a result of the defective products, the industry saw sales plummet and the U.S. government deemed available hoverboards unsafe. Now, large inventories remain unsold in the U.S.
The alliance hopes to build better relationships with e-commerce sites, like Amazon, in order to bolster the sales of hoverboards. But with the tough certification from the U.S., hoverboards certainly need a lot of reforms put in place for a safer product.
