Mountain Designs Pty Ltd - s.87B undertaking

Mountain Designs Pty Ltd, trading as Mountain Designs, has provided a court enforceable undertaking to the ACCC in respect to representations concerning its outdoor down products, particularly its down sleeping bags.

Mountain Designs has represented to consumers that its down sleeping bags contain 100% goose down or 100% duck down or 100% pure down.  It is widely acknowledged in the down products industry that it is highly unlikely that 100% down content could be achieved under normal commercial manufacturing processes.

ACCC testing of two Mountain Designs sleeping bags represented as containing 100% goose down showed that one Mountain Designs sleeping bag contained 77.4% goose down, while the other Mountain Designs sleeping bag contained 81.3% goose down, both significantly short of the represented 100% goose down.
 
Mountain Designs advised the ACCC that its 100% down content claims were made in reliance of its interpretation of the labelling percentage ‘tolerances’ allowed under the Australian Standard 2479-1987 (Down and/or feather filling materials and filled products), and that it had not intended to mislead or deceive consumers. 

Mountain Designs has undertaken to:

• not promote that any of its sleeping bags or clothing items contain 100% down, given that normal commercial manufacturing processes are very unlikely to achieve this percentage of down content;
• not make any down content percentage representations which include any percentage tolerance or allowance;
• not make any down content percentage representations that it cannot substantiate by way of testing of its finished down products by an International Down & Feather Bureau accredited testing organisation;
• place a corrective notice on its web-site for 3 months;
• in conjunction with certain other outdoor down products suppliers, place corrective newspaper advertisements in each State and Territory in which its sleeping bags have been sold; and
• implement and maintain a trade practices compliance program.