Natasha Khan | Photographs by M. Scott Brauer for WSJ

Cynthia Williams grew up playing make-believe in the woods of North Carolina. She was an outsider dreaming of being part of something bigger.

She took that mindset with her as she started her career and scaled the ranks of Amazon.com and Microsoft. To fight off impostor syndrome Williams came up with her signature Wonder Woman pose: Standing up with her hands on her hips for two minutes.

"I would do this whenever I felt nervous before a speech, a presentation, or a review with Jeff Bezos," she said.

Williams, 58, has fused play and pop-culture to carry her from her rural upbringing to the role of chief executive officer of collectibles company Funko, the maker of virally popular Pop figurines that have large heads and small bodies. She plays Pink's "F**ckin' Perfect" to prep for earnings calls. Her favorite line is "Change the voices in your head...Make them like you instead."

Now, she needs her imagination to help Funko pull out of its financial woes. It is being squeezed by President Trump's tariffs, and consumers are pulling back on their discretionary spending amid economic uncertainty. The company reached $1 billion of net sales in 2024, but in May reported lower revenue and a wider net loss. It also withdrew its outlook for the year. Its stock is down nearly 70% since the president first announced increased tariffs on China on Feb. 1, trading at $4.12 a share.

Williams's main goal is to expand the fan base. Buyers of its $12 vinyl Pops are typically about 40-years-old, and many collectors never take them out of the box. Pops have come in the likenesses of Tony Soprano, Ronald McDonald, Darth Vader, Harry Potter, the Powerpuff Girls and tens of thousands of others.

The Everett, Wash.,-based company plans to make more limited-edition Pops, sell in more countries and expand its personalized Pops -- buy a figurine to look like dad for Father's Day, for example. Many buyers collect and resell Pops. A rare figurine can fetch as much as $100,000 in the secondary market.

Funko recently announced a deal with the Women's National Basketball Association to produce Pops of players like Caitlin Clark of the Indiana Fever and Angel Reese of the Chicago Sky. The figurines sold quickly. Sports memorabilia and collectibles are a $35 billion global market, she said, but represent only about 4% of Funko's revenue.

Williams is also cutting costs. As of April, about 30% of Funko's production was in China. By the end of the year, Funko will make most of its products in Cambodia, Vietnam and Indonesia. China will represent just 5% of the company's total production.

Even before Trump's tariff announcement, Funko planned a 25% price increase, moving from $12 to $15 for all its non-limited edition Pops, which is still lower than competitor collectibles such as Youtooz and Pop Mart. Funko's figurines are sold directly on its website, at toy and collector stores, comic conferences, and retailers like Barnes & Noble and Amazon.com.

Williams was born in rural Lexington, N.C., where her father took a job managing an auto parts shop after leaving the military. Families there had lived in the town for generations. She found it hard to fit in. She loved pop music and DC Comics. She made up stories of adventure and sang into her hair brush in front of the mirror.

Her parents dreamed of going to college, but couldn't afford it. When she was in eighth grade, her dad lost his job, in part because he didn't have a college degree. From then on, she had a single-minded goal to get an education and be able to provide for herself, deciding in high school that she would get an M.B.A.

Williams earned that M.B.A. from Wake Forest University in 1995, then later moved to Seattle and joined Amazon's then-budding fulfillment business, where she stayed for a decade. She helped grow that business -- which helps Amazon sellers store and ship products -- from its beginning, when it was moving and storing $1 million of merchandise, to a point where it was moving and storing $100 billion globally.

At Amazon, and later at Microsoft, Williams said her confidence sometimes took a hit because she was surrounded by men who went to Ivy League schools -- her Bachelor's degree is from Western Carolina University. Whenever she felt nervous before a big professional moment, she would strike the Wonder Woman stance -- in her office, in the bathroom, wherever she could.

It wasn't until she joined Microsoft's Xbox division in 2018 that she learned about the power of fandom. She was at a 2019 Xbox event when Keanu Reeves, who played a character in the videogame Cyberpunk 2077, took the stage. Someone from the audience shouted to Reeves, "You're breathtaking!" He replied, "No, you're breathtaking!" The crowd erupted.

"It was just that first moment that I really understood how special it is when someone has that depth of passion and fandom for something," Williams says.

In 2022, Hasbro needed a new leader for its most valuable unit, Wizards of the Coast, after promoting the unit's head, Chris Cocks, to CEO.

Williams jumped at the opportunity to be president of the division which publishes role-playing games like Dungeons & Dragons, to sit on the executive team and to interact with the board. She was upfront with Cocks during her reviews that she, too, aspired to be a chief executive. She told him that she would either work at Hasbro until she retired or leave to become CEO somewhere else. When Funko came calling last year, she took the job. Williams lives with her husband in Seattle.

Funko was founded in 1998 and first made bobbleheads of nostalgic characters. The company was sold in 2005, and it introduced Pops, signing licensing deals with many media and entertainment companies like Disney, Lucasfilm, and HBO. Aside from Pops, it also sells themed accessories like Monopoly backpacks and more high-end figures, like 12-inch tall X-Men figures that sell for more than $200.

"There are things about being the CEO that until you sit in the seat, it's really hard to understand," she said. Every day she notes down points on a whiteboard, asking: "What can only I do?" She has been meeting fans at events like Comic Con and has also leaned into her own fandom.

In video chats from her home office, where she sometimes works, she displays a shelf full of dozens of Pops that she says tell people a bit more about her. She is a child of the 80s and has Pops from some of her favorite movies, like "Ferris Bueller's Day Off" and "The Breakfast Club." There are also Pops from her favorite musicians, like Prince, Aretha Franklin and Reba McEntire.

"Everyone is a fan of something," Williams said.

Write to Natasha Khan at natasha.khan@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

May 30, 2025 21:00 ET (01:00 GMT)

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