Dear Retailers,
Our AA13301 Young Artist Easel was tested recently and, to our great surprise, the chalkboard panel did not comply with the the Federal Standard for Lead Paint. We’ve already quarantined our inventory, which is why some of you have been unable to order the easel, and we are working closely with the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) to conduct a recall.
Finalizing the recall plan with the CPSC will take an unknown amount of time. In the meantime, we need your help!
Please pull the AA13301 Young Artist Easel off the sales floor and hold the easels for further instructions. Our tentative recall plan, worked on with the CPSC’s help, is to replace the existing green chalkboard panels with new black chalkboard panels. These panels will, of course, be shipped to you free of charge. We will have several ways you can contact us to get replacement panels for your existing inventory, including a phone number, an online form, and a special email address. We’ll get you this information just as soon as we are able. We appreciate your patience as we wait.
We’ll be mailing a full instruction kit to every retail location that has purchased the AA13301 easel. It will include instructions for how to convert your inventory, recall posters for your store shelf, cards with instructions for consumers (consumers will contact Art Alternatives for their free replacement panel), stickers with a new item number & UPC for your refurbished easels, etc. But first, we need the CPSC to approve our plan and our literature.
MacPherson’s will also be refurbishing our existing, quarantined easels by replacing the non-compliant, green chalkboard panels with a compliant, black ones. The new panels are in production and we expect to sell the Young Artist Easel again in late August, under a new item number with a new UPC. Our inventory is expected, but not guaranteed, to last through the Holiday season.
MacPherson’s will not be reordering this easel from this manufacturer; we will need to find a new, reliable source and that may take some time. Luckily, we were already working on a new kid’s easel when we discovered the problem with the old easel. The new easel, item #AA13325, is called the Art Activity Easel and it is due into our DCs in mid-September. It’s a better easel than the old one. It’s adjustable, the drawing surfaces are larger, the paper roll is larger, and the easel has handy storage baskets that hang at the bottom.
Please contact us if you have any comments, questions or concerns. Your sales rep and the Art Alternatives team are ready to answer your questions. I can be reached at (800) 289-9899 ext. 6616 from 8am-4:30pm Pacific Time, or at amyk@macphersonart.com. Alternatively, you can call our recall hotline at ext. 1093.
You have our sincere apologies for this terrible situation and the inconvenience it will cause you. We’ll get more info to you as soon as we get the go-ahead from the CPSC.
Thanks,
Amy K. & the Art Alternatives team