Garment supplier pleads guilty over kids’ clothes labelling

Clothing supplier Goodwear Limited (Goodwear) has pleaded guilty to 16 charges relating to missing or incorrect fire warning and other labelling on children’s clothing.

Goodwear imports clothing from China and distributes it to retailers throughout New Zealand. The charges, all under the Fair Trading Act 1986, relate to 25 different children’s garments. Goodwear supplied or offered to supply several hundred units of these non-compliant garments between 1 July 2016 and 30 October 2017.

Eleven garment types sold by Goodwear failed to comply with the product safety standard because:
• eight required fire warning labels but had none
• three had fire warning labels with incorrect wording.
There were 22 garment types which failed to comply with at least one of the consumer information standards, which include care labelling, fibre content labelling, and country of origin labelling requirements.

Between November 2016 and September 2017 Commission staff purchased 27 garments which had been supplied by Goodwear to two south Auckland retailers. The garments were sent for testing by the New Zealand Wool Testing Authority.

Goodwear will be sentenced in the Papakura District Court at 11.45am on 23 November.

As the matter is before the Court, the Commission will make no further comment at this time.

Background
The Commission enforces six mandatory product safety standards, including for children’s nightwear. The standards are intended to prevent or reduce the risk of injury.

Garments will breach the product safety standard if they do not have a warning label in the correct format, or if they do not have any label at all.

We also enforce five consumer information standards including for care, country of origin and fibre content. These ensure that consumers are provided with information that helps them make informed decisions when purchasing and caring for a product.

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