Funko has released its full-year 2022 financial results, and they’re not great. Whereas last year the company made a healthy $17.4 million profit, this year they’ve made almost a $50 million loss. In a call with investors, Funko CEO Brian Mariotti blamed "macro factors and Funko-specific issues" for the loss and confirmed layoffs and other cost-cutting measures will be taken to stem the bleeding.
Another factor that was mentioned in Funko’s 2022 report (via Kotaku) was inventory exceeding the company’s operating capacity. Basically, Funko has more of those Pop figures than it can store, and to save money on rental fees, it’s going to have to get rid of at least $30 million of product.
"Inventory at year-end totaled $246.4 million, an increase of 48% compared to a year ago," the company wrote. "This includes inventory that the Company intends to eliminate in the first half of 2023 to reduce fulfillment costs by managing inventory levels to align with the operating capacity of our distribution center. This is expected to result in a write down in the first half of 2023 of approximately $30 to $36 million."
In this case, "write down" is fancy business speak for "toss a bunch of Funko Pops into a landfill." Funko opened a distribution center last year which the report said incurred high rental fees for storing excess inventory in shipping containers. It also had to hire more staff to handle all those Pops, who will presumably be the first on the proverbial chopping block for those layoffs Mariotti mentioned.
This means the most likely location for those unwanted Funko Pops will be a landfill somewhere in Arizona, so if you're looking for some free bedroom adornments, maybe camp out at an Arizona dump? Actually, don't do that; most dumps don't allow scavenging, and besides, dumps often operate with heavy equipment moving things around which destroys whatever delicate figurines might be there. It's the same story with almost a quarter-million in Magic cards that someone spotted at a Texas dump one day but were all gone the next.