Williams-Sonoma Faces Pottery Barn Kids Crib Bumpers Recall

Today’s product recall involves Pottery Barn Kids Sweet Lambie Bumpers manufactured from April 2009 through July 2012. The cotton bumpers were manufactured in China and they are padded and fit standard cribs. The CPSC site says, “Consumers should stop using this product unless otherwise instructed. It is illegal to resell or attempt to resell a recalled consumer product.”

The company has said that it received two reports of the decorative stitching coming loose and entangling children, which included reports of the thread wrapping around a child’s neck. It is fortunate that no serious injuries have been reported. It was shown that these units were sold at the  Pottery Barn Kids stores, in catalogs, online, and at Pottery Barn Outlet stores nationwide from the months of April 2009 through July 2012 for between $129 and $149.

Even at the highest price the total sales here would be only about $1.8 million and that would have been spread over the life of the sales period. Williams-Sonoma has a market capitalization of $5.34 billion and its sales were $4 billion last year alone, so chances are very strong that this is not even going to be a line-item on the company’s next earnings report. As a reminder, not all customers actually go through the process of dealing with product recalls and many of these units will have already been thrown away.