The company behind Funko Pops has too much inventory and is apparently planning to dispose of collectible figures worth up to 36 million dollars.
Note: The title image is a symbolic image.
The company Funko is especially known for its Funko Pops. These are small to medium-sized figures that depict characters from well-known franchises in film, television, and gaming.
There are anime figures as well as characters from “The Office” or Apex Legends. Funko offers a huge selection of colorful characters. However, recently, sales numbers have apparently decreased so much that inventories need to be cleared.
Reddit user u/edelwiess20 posted a video showing Funko packaging at a landfill:
What does the company say? In a press release on March 1, 2023, the manufacturer of Funko Pops published a financial report for the fourth quarter of 2022 and a forecast for 2023.
In one paragraph it states: “The inventories at the end of the year amounted to a total of 246.4 million US dollars, an increase of 48% compared to the previous year.
This includes inventories that the company intends to reduce in the first half of 2023 to lower costs by adjusting the inventories to the operational capacity of our distribution center.
It is expected that this will result in a write-off of about 30 to 36 million US dollars in the first half of 2023.” (via investor.funko.com)
What does this mean? The company describes a problem: The inventories are getting out of hand and are now being reduced. However, it seems to be cheaper to dispose of the figures in landfills rather than to sell them off.
At least that is also suggested by the Reddit video that you can see above.
How did the excess inventory come about? In recent years, the figures sold quite well. Especially during the pandemic, sales were particularly bright for the company.
But now the demand for the little figures seems to have decreased significantly, leaving them apparently stuck with the inventory.
For one game, however, it is going really well: RPG has 93% positive reviews on Steam, offers 100 hours of content – is free if you have Skyrim
