It's actually pretty easy for it to go wrong. Especially if you balloon in orders. Say he Has money from old POs like starlord and other figures that cost 150-200 bucks for him. Then the hulk releases and he's forced to pay the supplier for a figure that costs 30% more, with a suddenly larger order. It's very easy to be in the negative. Especially if people had requested refunds or cancelled orders after he put in his order to his supplier. He's then got a lot more stock to pay for them money to cover it.
No one likes to say it or think about it, but the whole PO business is essentially a Ponzi scheme. All it takes is one bad figure (sales wise not on the merit of the figure) or a lot of PO cancelled and suddenly your in trouble.
My guess is that they just don't have the money to refund people, not enough to cover orders either. So they kept putting up new POs to try and use that to pay off old figure orders and refunds. But eventually word gets out and sales dry up and the whole system comes crashing down.
This type of thing could easily happen to sideshow as well. It would take years Becuase they have working Capitol and credit...but if suddenly a string of higher priced statues and figures bomb it's entirely possible. This is part of why I point out and stress why ordering a figure and then cancelling it later, or ordering it and not knowing if you even want it, is a bad idea. Someone has to eat that money. If 10% of all POs cancel that's a huge hit financially on a company. If it's on something like hulkbuster...and the figure doesn't sell out at retail price...all those cancelled POs cost the company thousands. Becuase the end retailer (sideshow or osb) still has to pay the full cost to the supplier for the figure. But now have an excess of stock.
Anyway...I don't expect this to happen with sideshow. They have a cart diversified portfolio and are distributors as well as retail. But I was just explaining that it's not hard for this to happen. And once it starts, it's very hard to recover. It's entirely possible that osb had/has no intention to scam or steal but they just got over extended and can't figure a way back. And coming out publicly and explain it(previously as now it probably wouldn't matter as they seem done) would only have hurt the one chance they had to pay back people and maybe stay afloat, which was new sales. But if they came out and said "look, we are cash poor, our credit is maxed, our supplier bailed, the only way we can fix it is if people keep giving us money..." Lol well, you can see how that plays. On top of legal issues. Lol
I am not defending them. They made some crappy mistakes and bad business calls....just trying to show people that it may not have been on purpose. And that when you order a figure on PO you need to understand the ramifications that can happen.
