Funko Is Destroying Millions Of Their Own Statues For A Wild Reason, Brand In Trouble?
Funko is destroying $30 million worth of inventory due to financial woes and storage costs.
The American toy manufacturer, Funko, inc. has announced that they will be destroying over $30 million worth of products in the coming months. The company, most popular for its Funko Pop! toy line featuring figures from many popular studios including Disney and Marvel, cites a major decline in profits and a net loss of nearly $50 million last year. With operating and storage costs too high, the manufacturer will have to get rid of excess inventory as a last-stitch measure to save the company, according to CBR.
For fans, the excessive profit loss in 2022 comes as a huge surprise. The year before, Funko was massively successful, reaping over $17 million in profit. The company’s change in fortune can be mostly blamed on the new Funko distribution center opening in Buckeye, Arizona last year.
In the last quarter of 2022, Funko had so much inventory, it could not all fit in the new Arizona distribution center. The company had to rent out new storage facilities to house the overstock inventory, leading costs to skyrocket by the end of the year. The waning popularity of the Funko Pop! collectibles can be partially to blame for the company’s financial blunder late last year,
Funko Pop! is a line of collectible figures depicting a huge selection of pop culture icons. The small statues can be found in the likenesses of Baby Yoda to Eddie Van Halen. However, they have been declining in popularity over the past few years.
This decline in sales is partially responsible for the massive inventory Funko generated by the end of 2022. Funko had $246.4 million in collectible figures in storage, that’s a whopping 48 percent more than last year. For the company, these unsold figurines ended up wracking up quite a bill, as they had to be moved to rented storage to accommodate the excess.
Amid this financial news, Funko has begun implementing aggressive cost-cutting measures. In addition to destroying between $30 and $36 million in excess inventory, they also plan to cut 10 percent of their workforce in the coming months. By getting rid of overstocked inventory, the manufacturer will be able to realign with the distribution center’s operating capacity and lower operating costs in the future.
While fans of the popular toy line are sad to hear that so many of the adorable figurines will be destroyed in the months to come, Funko still has a few exciting announcements for collectors to expect. Recent releases of the Funko Pop! line give collectors the chance to own Scarlet Witch from Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness and Black Panther from Captain America: Civil War.
Despite the waning popularity of the figures and the impending destruction of many unsold items, Funko is still expected to continue making and releasing new additions to the lineup. For those looking to buy something new from Funko, the manufacturer has an ever-expanding line of Star Wars–themed goods.
Funko is unlikely to be going anywhere in the future, even with the company’s latest financial blows. One of the company’s founders, Brian Mariotti, re-instated himself as Funko’s CEO last December after retiring in 2021, hopefully getting the manufacturer back on track.
