Daiso's continued operations have been supported by Daiso Japan.
Daiso's compliance measures during the period 13 November 2013 to 2 May 2016
12. The declarations made by this Honourable Court on 23 June 2017 cover the period 13 November 2013 to 2 May 2016.
13. In 2013, prior to the investigation by Consumer Affairs Victoria (CAV), Daiso had no system in place to ensure compliance with Australian mandatory standards.
14. On 14 November 2013, CAV inspectors visited 4 Daiso stores in Victoria and seized 5,710 units of non-compliant products (5,475 units of cosmetics, 17 units of projectile toys and 218 units of sunglasses or fashion spectacles).
15. After the November 2013 inspections:
(a) Mr King, then Daiso's State manager for New South Wales and Queensland, directed store managers to remove from sale all cosmetic products without labels identifying ingredients in English and to quarantine them in the back room of stores; and
(b) Daiso prepared English ingredient labels for the cosmetics products CAV had identified as non-compliant and these labels were affixed to the products.
16. Product recall notices issued by Daiso for cosmetics state that Daiso ceased selling those products on 20 December 2013. Nevertheless, samples of non-compliant cosmetics were seized or purchased in inspections on 26 March 2015, 12 August 2015 and 28 April 2016 (see Tables 4, 6 and 7 in Annexure A).
17. On 23 January 2014, CAV served Daiso with the First s 126 Notice which identified cosmetics and toiletries, toys and sunglasses product lines which had been seized or purchased from Daiso.
18. Daiso responded by having managers remove those toys from sale, the cosmetics products having been removed from sale and relabelled following the November 2013 inspections. Product recall notices issued by Daiso in respect of projectile toys and sunglasses state it ceased selling those products on 21 March 2014.
19. In May 2014, Mr Taku Suzuki, then an executive of Daiso Japan, had a short conversation with Ms Cheong who said that Daiso was having a problem with the consumer regulator about some product packaging and specifications but Ms Cheong did not convey to Mr Suzuki that the problem was serious. Mr Suzuki expected that Ms Cheong would have talked to Mr Sato if there was a serious problem as she was meant to liaise with him about Daiso's operations or with Mr Naito, because he was a director of Daiso Japan at the time and Mr Suzuki was not.
20. On 30 September 2014, Ms Cheong resigned as managing director. Most of Daiso's senior management team and key personnel resigned around this time as well.
21. In late 2014, by reason of the matters set out in the previous paragraph, Mr King assumed increased management responsibilities. He instructed cluster managers and store managers to change the way the back room of stores operated by directing staff to separate products into categories and affix English language ingredients labels to cosmetics in the back room before bringing the stock into the store.
22. In early 2015:
(a) Mr King first became aware of the existence of product safety standards;
(b) Mr King held state meetings with all cluster managers and store managers where approximately one hour was spent talking about:
(i) the need for cosmetics and toiletries to have English ingredients labelling and the need to check all products in that category;
(ii) the warning labels that needed to be on toys and the need to check all products in that category;
(iii) the need to tell staff that all products delivered in the above categories were checked to ensure they had appropriate English ingredients and warning labels affixed to them;
(c) Mr King visited all stores and:
(i) spoke to store managers so that they understood their role in relation to checking products to ensure they had correct English ingredients and warning labelling;
(ii) told store managers to tell their staff that cosmetics products and toys could not be taken from the back rooms into stores until they had been labelled; and
(iii) provided store managers with English ingredients labels for products in PDF and told them to print the labels and store them in the back room ready to be affixed to products.
23. On 26 March 2015, CAV and New South Wales and Queensland regulators conducted inspections and seized or purchased non-compliant cosmetics (476 units), children's toys (64 units) and luggage straps (141 units).
24. On 18 May 2015, CAV served Daiso with the Second 126 Notice which, inter alia, identified 21 cosmetics and toiletries product lines which had been seized or purchased from Daiso.
25. In mid-2015, Daiso implemented Daiso Japan's automated operating system (AOS). The AOS included warning information about products, but that information was directed only at compliance with Japanese product standards. The AOS gave store managers the ability to order products from Daiso's Australian distribution centres and enabled Daiso to block store managers from ordering product lines from the distribution centres. It also permitted Daiso Japan to place a ban on supply of a particular product to countries outside Japan.
26. In July 2015, Daiso appointed a new general manager, Mr Osumi, who was responsible for supply chain management. Mr Osumi, Mr King and Mr Suzuki have all stated that when they started working for Daiso they were not aware of the existence of mandatory product safety standards or information standards. Mr King became aware of the standards in early 2015, Mr Suzuki became aware of the standards in May 2015 and Mr Osumi was aware of the standards from at least August 2015.
27. Following inspections conducted by CAV on 15 July 2015, Daiso took the following steps to ensure compliance with the mandatory safety standards:
(a) it directed store managers to remove from sale the products identified by CAV as non-compliant and,
(b) it stopped ordering luggage straps and wrote off all existing stock of luggage straps; The instruction to store managers to implement this was conveyed by email on 7 August 2015;
(c) Mr King informed himself about mandatory product safety standards and information standards by his own internet research;
(d) Mr King, Mr Osumi and Daiso's retail buyer Ms Naoko Ishibashi (Ms Ishibashi) attended Daiso's Chadstone store, identified every toy that might have small or breakable parts and examined those toys by dropping them onto the ground from above head-height. None of the toys broke;
(e) Mr King sent an email to all store managers attaching a list of products in the range of Daiso Merchandise that were banned from sale in Australia and directed them to review all products in store to ensure products of those kinds were not for sale; and
(f) Mr King and Mr Osumi had a discussion about what they could do to ensure Daiso complied with the product safety standards and information standards and they decided to:
(i) provide training to cluster managers and store managers to ensure all staff understood what they needed to do to ensure Daiso complied with its product safety obligations; and
(ii) implement changes to Daiso's operations manual.
28. At around this time, Mr King implemented changes to Daiso's operations manual to include a section on labelling requirements which set out:
(a) the categories of products subject to labelling information standards;
(b) detail about the product safety standards and information standards including what was required to be included on labels for each category of product; and
(c) the process for requesting labels from Japan.
29. On 13 July 2015, Daiso directed a team to investigate whether labelling on the cosmetics and toiletries products identified by CAV in the Second 126 Notice was compliant. For the 21 products reviewed:
(a) 13 labels were found to be non-compliant and were rectified;
(b) one product was identified as having compliant labelling on the manufacturer's packaging; and
(c) two labels were amended to correct minor typographical errors.
30. On 6 August 2015, CAV wrote to Daiso identifying specific product lines (toys, luggage straps and cosmetics) found to be non-compliant following inspections on 26 March and 15 July 2015 and recommended that Daiso cease supplying the products and institute a voluntary recall in respect of the products.
31. On 7 August 2015, Mr King sent an email to Daiso store managers attaching a further series of English ingredients labels, directing them to affix the labels to cosmetics products that had been removed from sale and write off the toys and luggage straps that had been removed from sale.
32. On 12 August 2015, CAV conducted inspections at five of Daiso's Victorian stores and found non-compliant children's toys at one store (7 units) and non-compliant cosmetics at another (40 units).
33. Product recall notices issued by Daiso state that it ceased selling three lines of children's toys on 18 August 2015 and a further five on 28 August 2015. The recall notice for luggage straps states it ceased selling those on 28 August 2015.
34. In approximately September 2015, Mr King delivered training sessions to all Daiso cluster managers and store managers which focused on Daiso's obligation to label all cosmetics products with English ingredient labels with ingredients listed by volume in descending order and how to identify cosmetic and personal care products. During these training sessions, Mr King told cluster managers and store managers to pass on the information to their staff and follow up to ensure Daiso's labelling obligations were being complied with. He also circulated colour photos of cosmetics products that complied with the mandatory information standard.
35. From mid-2015, Mr King started holding weekly telephone conferences and monthly in person conferences with Daiso's cluster managers during which Daiso's obligation to label cosmetics and toiletries products were sometimes discussed.
36. In March 2016, during one of the weekly telephone conferences, Mr King directed Daiso's cluster managers to conduct a full review of all product labels in stores to ensure that all cosmetics and toiletries and arts and crafts products had correct English ingredients labelling and all toys had correct age and warning labelling.
Daiso's compliance measures subsequent to the commencement of these proceedings
37. CAV served Daiso with the originating application in this proceeding on 10 August 2016.
38. In around August 2016, Daiso decided to engage an organisation to conduct product safety training and make improvements to Daiso's product ordering and product safety compliance policies and procedures. Also at this time, Mr Suzuki asked Mr Osumi and Mr King to be vigilant with product labelling and to arrange training for cluster managers and store managers.
39. On around 14 September 2016, Mr Osumi, Mr King and Ms Ishibashi reviewed all products in the AOS to make sure they complied with the mandatory standards. They did not identify any products with compliance issues. By that time, Daiso had ceased ordering toys intended for or that might be used for children under 36 months or which contain small or breakable parts.
40. In mid-October 2016, Mr King implemented a responsible retailing checklist procedure that he had prepared following a review of information that related to Daiso's product lines obtained from the ACCC product safety website. The responsible retailing checklist requires store managers to oversee a full review of the products in store on a weekly basis as follows:
(a) all cosmetics and toiletries products, button batteries and products containing button batteries, cleaning products, sunglasses, toys, balloons and food products are checked to ensure they have appropriate labelling;
(b) any products that may not comply with the mandatory standards are removed from the floors and quarantined; and
Daiso's cluster managers and store managers were provided with the responsible retailing checklist, told how it worked and directed to tell store managers to complete the checklist each Friday and send the completed forms to the cluster managers and Mr King.
41. On 15 February 2017, Daiso convened training sessions for management, including cluster managers, presented by Dr Michelle Sharpe (Dr Sharpe), a barrister experienced in product safety matters.
42. In around February 2017, Daiso appointed Mr Dee, a regulatory compliance professional, to review Daiso's ACL compliance management system, help update that system and provide training on the ACL.
43. On 14 March 2017, Mr Dee conducted a training session for Daiso management on the ACL and product safety. Also on that date, Daiso received a report from Mr Dee and established a compliance committee.
44. In mid-March 2017, Daiso implemented improvements to the responsible retail checklist procedure by:
(a) instructing store managers to record details about any product safety issues and actions taken to remedy those issues and report this information to Mr King on a weekly basis; and
(b) instructing cluster managers to visit each of their stores on a monthly basis and personally complete the checklist to ensure there were no product safety issues.
45. In late March 2017, Daiso updated its operations manual to include compliance procedures recommended by Mr Dee. These included, amongst other things, a compliance plan, quarantine and banned products procedure and product ordering procedure.
46. In May 2017, Daiso delivered internal compliance and recall training seminars based on the regulatory compliance training provided by Dr Sharpe and Mr Dee for all cluster managers and store managers. Compliance training for cluster managers is ongoing with Mr King holding weekly one on one sessions by telephone with each cluster manager on product safety issues.
47. In August 2017, Daiso commissioned Mr Dee to audit its compliance management system. Mr Dee reported in his audit report that Daiso's compliance management system contained all the necessary features of a well-established, comprehensive and effective compliance management system with tasks embedded in the day to day operation of the business including, amongst other things:
(a) a compliance plan and policy;
(b) operating procedures to identify ACL risks including monitoring and reporting systems;
(c) regular communications on compliance issues;
(d) detailed and on-going risk assessment of ACL risks;
(e) a commitment to the compliance management system from top and middle management;
(f) a senior manager as compliance officer; and
(g) education and training on the ACL.
48. On 30 August 2017, Mr Dee conducted a further training session for Daiso management on the ACL and product safety.
49. In September 2017, Daiso implemented changes to its induction procedure to inform new employees about Daiso's compliance obligations. As part of the new induction process, new employees are told about Daiso's product safety obligations, how to identify products requiring labelling, how to label products and the holding and quarantine areas in the back room and taken through the responsible retailing checklist.
Daiso's voluntary product recall
50. In May 2017, Daiso started a voluntary recall of products it had sold that did not comply with product safety standards. Daiso formally notified the ACCC of its intention to conduct a recall on 31 May 2017.
51. On 22 June 2017, Daiso's recall notices were published on the ACCC's product safety website, its own website and were displayed in all stores.
52. A document headed 'Voluntary Recall Strategy' prepared by or for Daiso provides details of the recall.
53. Daiso reported the progress of the voluntary recall to the ACCC. The voluntary recall resulted in:
(a) 10 products being returned by consumers (in the cosmetics product category);
(b) 10 refunds being made to consumers who returned the above products;
(c) no complaints being made; and
(d) no illnesses or injuries being reported (save for one report of slight reddishness to the face by a consumer who returned a cosmetics product).
Daiso possessing, controlling and offering for sale, relevant consumer goods
54. Contraventions by Daiso of ss 106(1), (2) and (3) and 136(1), (2) and (3) are made out in three ways on the material before the Court.
(a) First, at inspections conducted by CAV and its interstate counterparts, NSW Fair Trading and Fair Trading Queensland, on 14 November 2013, 26 March 2015, 3 June [2015], 15 July 2015, 12 August 2015 and 28 April 2016 to 2 May 2016, Daiso was found to be supplying and offering for supply consumer goods which did not comply either with mandatory safety standards or information standards. Some 6,559 units of non-complying products were either seized or purchased by way of sample. The facts establishing these contraventions are set out below at [55] to [56].
(b) Second, by its notice of voluntary recall, the subject of evidence and admissions made by evidence filed in this proceeding, Daiso has accepted that it sold 49,454 units of non-complying consumer goods. These products had a retail price of $2.80. The facts establishing these contraventions are set out below at [57] to [59];
(c) Third, Daiso's shipping records and a summary of its shipping records, supplied to CAV in Daiso's responses to notices given under s 126 of the ACLFTA, establish that in date ranges between 1 November 2013 and 2 May 2016, Daiso possessed or had control of 60,969 units of non-complying consumer goods. The facts establishing these contraventions are set out below at [60] to [64].
Consumer goods seized or sample-purchased at regulator inspections
55. Table 1 below states the dates on which inspectors from Consumer Affairs Victoria, NSW Fair Trading and the Queensland Office of Fair Trading conducted inspections of Daiso stores and gives the number of units of non-compliant products seized or sample purchased.
Table 1: Summary of regulator inspections and goods seized or sample purchased
Date(s) of inspection Projectile toys Cosmetics Sunglasses / fashion spectacles Toys children ≤ 36 months Luggage straps Totals
14 Nov 2013 [Note 1] 17 5,475 218 5,710
26 Mar 2015, 3 June 2015 [Note 2] 476 68 144 688
15 Jul 2015 [Note 3] 122 122
12 Aug 2015 [Note 4] 40 7 47
28 Apr 2016 - 2 May 2016 [Note 5] 3 4 7
Totals 17 5,978 218 203 144 6,559