Good day mummy and daddies. It’s time for new products from Meinkind again. It’s a new product line that wasn’t seen in previous Meinkind line up. And we think that this is a very good starting point for new mums and dads. As usual, click the continue reading button if you’re interested to know more about this cute product.
Meinkind Carrier Car Seat is a 2-in-1 product that can be used as a baby carrier, or rear facing car seat for newborn to 13kg. And we can say that this is a must have for all new parents as this is the simplest way to carry your baby around. And using it as a rear facing car seat only requires you to put it into a right position and buckle it up.
Here are the features for the Meinkind Carrier Car Seat.
- Foam Padded Grip : Mummies and daddies should be feeling comfortable to hold this product. Also, the added grip lowers the chance of dropping it accidentally.
- Removable Canopy : In a good weather, you can remove the canopy for your baby to see this beautiful world.
- Thick Comfortable Padding : Your precious baby deserves comfortable padding in a baby car seat.
- Aluminium Alloy Handle : Built tough and last longer.
Safety wise, this Carrier Car Seat is ECE certified. As at October 2020, we’re processing the application for JPJ and MIROS certification. Maybe we should explain that, we will definitely get the MIROS sticker on this product as it’s already ECE certified. Malaysia government decided not to test all baby products right here in Malaysia as it would increase the baby products selling price by A LOT.
Our Malaysian government had decided to match ECE certification to the products we import. JPJ will check whether it’s the exact same product as the certificate, they’ll go through three documentation steps, then with the JPJ forms MIROS will give us the stickers for the particular product.
Some people might say that we Malaysian should have our own tests right here in Malaysia. We cannot agree on this for various reasons as follow.
- Duplicated tests. Take motorcycle helmets for example, our Malaysia SIRIM tests follow bulat bulat on the ECE standards. With one major difference though, we have a lot of motorcycle helmets manufacturers right here in Malaysia. So, having SIRIM tests right here in Malaysia will allow all Malaysian riders to have safer helmets with reasonable price. However, there’s no Malaysian baby gears manufacturer as at October 2020 and we don’t see any changes coming soon. And all the overseas manufacturers have been going through ECE tests since the Research and Development stage. So, our view is that we have no need to do another set of tests that’s exactly the same as the ECE tests.
- Lack of testing equipment. Our ASEAN NCAP testing equipment are developed to test cars, not baby gears. Unless someone decided that testing a baby car seat worth totaling a new car, the Malaysian government will need to spend a lot on purchasing new test equipment to test baby car seats. In short and simple comparison, ASEAN NCAP is evaluating the safety of a car as a whole in a crash, against a wall, against other vehicle, and against pedestrians. ECE is evaluating the ability of a baby car seat to protect the baby in a crash. As the baby car seat will most probably not in contact with walls or any other vehicle.
- Every single test is very costly. We had heard it from the bosses of different manufacturers, “every boom cost 15,000 Ringgit”. The crash test dummy is made from ballistic gel to mimic the soft tissues of human. And each crash test dummy has an array of sensors inside to read and transmit data from critical points. As the sensors tend to move or sometimes pierce the ballistic gel at each crash, there’s no way that the sensors can read accurate data after each crash. And if you’re thinking that RM 15,000 per boom is reasonable, a complete set of ECE tests might require 20 to 65 individual test. That translate to a rough estimate of RM 300,000 to RM 975,000. As the tests will need to cover frontal impact, rear impact, side impact, and rollover as the basic set of tests. For some products that are covering wider age groups, it will need to go through the basic set with different dummies that weight 3.4kg, 9kg, 11kg, 15kg, 22kg, and 32kg. This is to ensure the product is safe for all the age groups it claimed to cover.
- Cost and Selling Price. With all the points we had made so far, we think that having the duplicated tests here in Malaysia will only adds up the cost and ultimately selling price, without adding any value to the products. And having any distributor to pay that much for a complete test before having a chance to sell anything will definitely kill all the SMEs in the baby gear industry. And having only big listed companies to be able to afford the tests and sell baby gears, the lack of competition will drive the price up even further.
Oops. Looks like we had added too much information to this blog. Thanks for reading. Stay safe and have a nice day.