Mattel Partners with Quirky in Bid to Revive Barbie: Will it Work?

Toymaker Mattel has been experiencing dwindling sales as the company's main consumers - children - are becoming increasingly interested in playing with mobiles and other handheld devices, saw its sales drop for a sixth consecutive quarter.

Net sales fell by 2.5% in the three months to March from a year ago, while global sales of Barbie fell 14% in the same period, the company said in an earnings report released Thursday.

Electronic toys, tablets and merchandise from popular films such as Disney's "Frozen", along with competition from rivals Hasbro and Denmark's Lego have all led to sliding sales of the doll.

Mattel also on Thursday said it would partner with Quirky, a platform that links companies with inventors to develop new products.

"We've been getting toy ideas since we launched the site in 2009," Quirky founder and CEO Ben Kaufman told Fortune.

In an bid to revive interest in Barbie, Mattel had fired chief executive Bryan Stockton in January and replaced him with board member Christopher Sinclair.

"In the first quarter, we took a number of steps to implement a rapid turnaround at Mattel," Mattel Chairman and CEO Christopher Sinclair said in a statement. "We are already benefiting from better decision-making, alignment and enhanced accountability. And we've begun to refocus our culture on creativity, innovation and improving our speed to market. While we still have a lot of work to do, we're starting to see progress with our core brands like Barbie and Fisher-Price, and I am confident we are making the changes necessary to perform better in the future."

The company's New York listed shares were up 6.5% in after-hours trading after its sales decline was not as bad as analysts had feared.