PC Squared Consultants
Your Consumer Product Safety, Regulatory Compliance, Quality Assurance Consultant and Expert
Toys | Children's Products | Furniture | Sporting Goods | Fitness | Arts & Crafts | Kitchen | Home & Household | Bedding & Bath | Party | Gift | Seasonal | Pet Products | Outdoor Infant, Baby, Toddler, Juvenile | Apparel & Textile | Jewelry | Accessories | Small Appliances | Electronics | Electrical | Cosmetics | Tools & Hardware | Household Chemicals
CPSC | CPSIA | Various US Federal, 50-State & Local Regulations / Laws | ASTM, UL, ANSI/BIFMA & Other Voluntary Standards | EPA | FDA | FTC | FCC | CBP | CA Prop 65
About Paul Chen
When Paul is not devoting his time and passion to his work, he "lives to eat" and enjoys cooking just about everything under the sun that he can get his hands on. During the summer time, Paul unwinds by taking out his boat and camper to the nearby Beaver Lake to take advantage of the natural scenic beauty that Arkansas has to offer.
Paul Chen
[ Founder and Principal Consultant ]
Paul has over 22+ years of experience in the consumer products industry, most recently for the Product Safety & Compliance division at Walmart Inc. He was responsible for managing the regulatory compliance testing and auditing programs for general merchandise (non-food) items offered for sale in the Walmart, Walmart.com, Sam's Club, samsclub.com, and Puerto Rico formats. This included direct import, domestic, private label, supplier and national brand items in 20+ departments/ categories.
Paul demonstrated strong technical knowledge and influenced best practices amongst his peers. He has a proven track record of supplier engagement through continual technical support, education of the testing programs, policies and processes and the willingness to go the extra mile to assist with compliance testing issues. He has provided supported to companies of all sizes, from small to mid-sized to Fortune 500. He also held strong relationships with the industry-leading and Walmart Sam's Club and e-commerce approved labs (CTL, BV, ITS, SGS, UL, ACT, MTS, TUV-R). Paul developed and maintained in-house testing protocols and published compliance documentation for internal/external distribution. He built and maintained a trustworthy reputation with the buyers, product quality /technical, Global Sourcing, Merchandise Quality Engineers (MQE's), Direct Sourcing Group (DSG), sourcing, Legal, direct import logistics, packaging, replenishment, product development and other internal stakeholders. He also established and maintained critical relationships with government regulatory agencies.
Paul also monitored new, pending and enacted legislative bills on the local, state and federal levels. He led multiple cross-functional projects to develop verification (audit) and continuous improvement programs, including business process mapping, system requirements, process development, training and reporting tools.
Prior to Walmart, Paul was at Baker & Taylor Publishing Group, which specializes in juvenile book, adult trade and promotional books. Paul's role was to develop and implement programs, policies and processes to ensure that their juvenile books complied with all applicable toys and children's product regulatory requirements for the US and International markets. He engineered a database to house test report results, a reporting tool for testing trend analysis and a database tool to auto-generate certificates of conformity. He also implemented strategic initiatives to achieve overall testing cost savings and cost avoidance.
Paul began his compliance and quality assurance career at Intertek, a leading provider of quality, safety, testing, audit, inspection and certification services. Paul consulted with clients in the development, maintenance and improvement of their quality assurance program to meet regulatory, including the then-new CPSIA, and performance requirements. From this experience, he gained extensive technical knowledge of global regulatory requirements and industry-specific voluntary standards. He specialized in toys and children's products testing and quality assurance inspections, but also served clients in the various softline & hardlines product areas.
Before that, he held various positions in the toy, children's product and sporting goods industry.
Paul earned a Bachelor of Science (BS) in Business Information Systems degree from DeVry University and Master of Business Administration (MBA) degree from Keller Graduate School of Management. He holds a Certificate in Product Risk Assessment, as well as in Product Safety Analysis, from St. Louis University. He is also a certified American Society for Quality (ASQ) Quality Improvement Associate and active member of the International Consumer Product Health & Safety Organization (ICPHSO).
Paul is fluent in Chinese (Mandarin) and has an appreciation for international cultural diversity attained through his professional interactions with multinational companies.