Funko in the landfill
Based on what was recently reported by Kotaku , it seems that Funko , a well-known company, especially in the nerd sector for its Funko Pops , has decided to send an amount of gadgets equivalent to about 30 million to the landfill of dollars . Such a choice was dictated by an overload of inventories in the warehouse that absolutely needed to be eliminated as soon as possible.
Funko: the redundancies force the company to send dump 30 million dollars worth of products
Funko says:Inventory at the end of the year totaled $246.4 million, an increase of 48% over the previous year. This includes what the company wants to eliminate in the first half of 2023 to reduce costs by managing levels internally to align them with the operational capacity of distribution centers
Information about this particular move of Funko were reported during a meeting with shareholders, again on the basis of the site we mentioned earlier, revealing that many unsold products are stationed in the various warehouses that require decisive action once and for all. Even if sending everything to the landfill means throwing away millions, the situation is probably so critical that there is no other way out.
It really seems that the huge production of the much loved Funko Pops (if you are interested in buying those of your favorite characters, you can find them on Amazon), with other gadgets of various kinds attached, has pushed the company towards an overproduction quite unexpected and unmanageable, with the only option of the dump . Brian Mariotti , the CEO of the famous company said, again during this meeting with the shareholders, that a distribution center found itself managing so many gadgets and products all at once that it had to rent shipping containers to be able to coordinate the stocks in excess.
This is by no means the first time a company has been forced to manage its redundancies in this way, finding itself obliged to make an enormous waste not only in monetary terms, but also in terms of raw materials and the impact that such movements have on the planet. In the age of consumerism there is always a tendency to overproduce, and a dynamic like this, which is all too consolidated, has always pushed the big names in commerce to prefer the landfill/incinerator route to any other option that could negatively impact the market balance.