A night light sold in the promotional products industry, supplied by Corvest prior to its acquisition by Camsing Global LLC, made news in a variety of industry sources yesterday following a Consumer Product Safety Commission press release. There were five complaints made in total and no injuries were reported, and the product was quickly voluntarily recalled by Camsing Global earlier this year. In order to get the full details of the recall, Promo Marketing spoke to Jason Miller, president of Camsing Global LLC, Largo, Fla.
Promo Marketing: Can you explain the details of the recall?
Jason Miller: It’s a night light product that Adva-Lite has been selling for years, specifically 10 years or so. It is a staple product in the category. We received a shipment in late December/early January. The first orders on that item started to go out at the end of January, early February. We received a complaint that one had burnt out a socket. We immediately put the inventory we had on hand on quarantine. Then we received another complaint, we ended up with five complaints in total, but it was after the second complaint that we reached out to the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) to talk through what a voluntary recall would look like, and how they would guide us through that process.
PM: So this recall was entirely initiated by Camsing Global?
JM: Yes, we did this. We could have probably done nothing to be quite honest. But, we contacted CPSC. We initiated the contact [with CPSC], doing the right thing by our distributors. It’s just the right way to run a business. It’s a night light, the last thing we want to do is cause injury or a fire. The product is made of a flame-retardant material, so we don’t believe there is a [fire] issue there and the CPSC [also] didn’t believe there was a big issue. [For this reason], they had us only contact those particular isolated distributors who would be impacted. So we did that.
There were 26,000 pieces in total. 10,000 of them got out into the market place. We’ve already gotten back 3,000 or 4,000, based on us getting on top of it right away. And we’ve worked directly with the 15 distributors who were impacted by this. I called most of them individually myself; if not me it was their sales rep. We blitzed the phones over a couple of days and spoke with everyone. We’ve worked with them to issue credit and get the products back. We also set up a phone line for them to call in here.
PM: So the actual recall occurred a while ago?
JM: It was resolved back in April, May and June. [This] is when, from my perspective, it concluded itself. It will never be finished until we collect every last individual night light that’s out there, but the reality of that is highly unlikely.
So, from that point, this is more of a technicality after the fact. We’ve been working with the CPSC on the press release that would be posted to their website. It’s taken their attorneys and our attorneys up until this last Friday to agree on the language in it. All of the damage control with distributors and the CPSC was done a few months ago.
PM: What caused the product to malfunction?
JM: We contacted the supplier of record and they changed materials to try to save cost. We isolated it to that one shipment. We’ve had multiple conversations with people at the factory to verify [and] they showed us the purchase material slips that showed they changed materials. They’ve apologized for this and they’ve been working with us.
PM: You had no idea?
JM: Oh no, we had no idea. It wasn’t until we received a complaint and quarantined the products here. We then went through our own testing and we brought in some outside testing agencies to look at it as well. We found no problems with it, so it was really random.
PM: So you have since changed back to the original materials?
JM: Yes. We have gone back to the original materials. We’ve tested them and they’ve all tested OK.
PM: Is there any other information you want to get out to the distributor community to set them at ease?
JM: Yes, the contact information is out there. We are doing everything in our power to get the night lights back that are in question. We are doing the right thing. We are not hiding.
