No love to independent stores

[baston1031]

Hi, I own and operate a small store in the US. I'd rather not get into which store as I am not here to self-promote. More so, I have a question, I of course love carrying Funko products and have built a rather strong following for Funko products in my city. I am not going to sit and complain about the amount of exclusives major box stores get, but I was rather excited when they announced the Funko cereal and pez line. I was equally as dissapointed to hear that all of the cereal was exclusives only. Why is that? I would have thought maybe because it is food and needed to be in a food establishment, but Hot Topic and FYE are selling them. Maybe it is the worry of distribution of perishable items? I always hear that Brian is lurking in this forum, I was hoping to hear from him on why they chose not to release the cereals through all channels. Thanks for your time,

Brad

[Valde]

It’s more than likely Funko needed partners to go in with them to support the product to get it going and then future waves will be broadened to all retailers. Who knows if it’s going to be successful, who knows if collectors even want cereal? A majority of fans I see are in box so selling food with a mini Pop seems like a hard sell to me. Remember when Pop tees first came out? Hot Topic was like the only place that sold them outside of the Funko booth at SDCC/NYCC. It took quite a while for them to be available at GameStop, TRU and Entertainment Earth. It could be the same type of thing or something completely different. I hope you’re able to get the cereal at your store eventually.

[dexiesmom]

I would imagine with the cereal, since it is a brand new product line, they needed to link them to big, well known, anchor stores. Hopefully now that they see it selling well they can expand it to smaller stores like yours. Pez already sell well, so they should be able to instantly expand it to independent stores.

[baston1031]

Thanks valde I hope they offer some eventually. It seems like Pez is going to be nationwide which is awesome because I already carry standard Pez and can't wait to migrate the new Pez line with the old. I just wish there were a few more items that maybe went to specialty series first, some of the cooler off the wall stuff, maybe a 10". I was encouraged to see specialty series receiving a new mystery mini line but I want to see more diversity. Whatever happened with Funko offering Soda, was that a one time SDCC thing or will that ever happen again, I loved those.

[Classier]

Thanks valde I hope they offer some eventually. It seems like Pez is going to be nationwide which is awesome because I already carry standard Pez and can't wait to migrate the new Pez line with the old. I just wish there were a few more items that maybe went to specialty series first, some of the cooler off the wall stuff, maybe a 10". I was encouraged to see specialty series receiving a new mystery mini line but I want to see more diversity. Whatever happened with Funko offering Soda, was that a one time SDCC thing or will that ever happen again, I loved those.

About the soda, apparently most of them broke in shipping, so that’s probably why we haven’t seen any more of those.

[beckysaurus]

Yes the soda was definitely a one-time deal for the popup shop in 2017.

Have you tried emailing the business sales team with your questions? I wonder if they would be able to answer some of them for you.

[baston1031]

I try not to bother my sales rep too much, until there is something very important to discuss.