Funko, pop culture giant that was perhaps too big for it’s britches, is literally dumping $30 million worth of unsold merchandise, including Pop Vinyls. Even if you don’t own one of the large-headed figurines, you have to have seen them in stores or know someone who owns them; maybe owns several. With the variety of shows, games, films, comics, and musical groups they’ve been modeled after, there’s likely a Funko pop out there that you’d be especially fond of. In fact, there actually might be too many, and Funko itself is needing to take action as their inventory is actually costing them money.
At the end of 2022, Funko had approximately $246 million worth of product sitting in storage. This was an increase of 48% inventory from the end of 2021. It would appear demand for that inventory has not been on pace to match the increase of it. Normally having a bunch of inventory on hand wouldn’t be a bad thing, but it is when you have so much of it that you have to rent out storage space to hold it.
That’s the situation Funko currently finds itself in. Considering they reported a $47 million loss in the fourth quarter of 2022, this isn’t a good place to be in. It’s even worse when you consider that in the same quarter in 2022, they had made a $17 million profit.
So what does one do when faced with a situation like this? Well, if you were a physical store, you’d try a liquidation sale. While they DO have one flagship store in Hollywood, CA, Funko distributes its products to multiple stores. If the stores don’t want the product, they can’t ship more to them. So what’s a company to do when they have all this product they can’t sell? Well, you dump it.
This may conjure up memories of the “E.T.” Atari video game dump. [Editor’s note: If you haven’t watched “Atari: Game Over,” please do.]
But what do you do with a bunch of unsold Funko pops? Part of that depends on what Funkos they are. Because of all the licensing deals and properties the figures are associated with, some of them are more desirable and sought after than others. Odds are that they may have overshot expectations for certain SKUs to sell, leading to extra inventory that no one really wants. Sure, all those Funko Pops from “Eternals“ seemed like a good idea at the time.
Of more concern is Funko cut 10% of their workforce due to the financial losses. While that isn’t as snappy a headline, it is a far more serious matter. Our thoughts go out to those whose jobs were affected as Funko attempts to shore up its finances. We sincerely hope you are able to land on your feet.
Just because a bunch of figurines had to get dumped, doesn’t mean you did.
