marvel comics turnaround - Turnaround Management Association

Marvel Comics Turnaround Team 2
products like apparel, stationary, back-to-school, seasonal gifts, footwear, and collectibles.
Finally, they increased their potential future licensing deals by increasing the film pipeline.
2. Publishing: Marvel made this core business profitable once again. On the cost side, they
cut back on expensive exclusive agreements with certain writers and artists, and replaced
expensive hand coloring processes with less expensive computer coloring. On the revenue
side, they mended relationships with the industry’s top talent, many of whom had left
Marvel during the bankruptcy or before because of artistic reasons, to improve the quality
of their product so that sales would increase again. On the distribution side, they
contracted with Diamond Comics, an independent unaffiliated entity, which processes all
orders from the independent comic shops. This allowed Marvel to print to order to
eliminate excess inventory.
3. Toys: Marvel also made this business profitable by shedding all but the most profitable toy
lines, which usually amounted to those toys that were derivatives of their most popular
licensed characters like Spiderman, X-Men and the Hulk, and only housing the design
function in-house. All production was contracted out to a Hong Kong- based company
called Toy Biz Worldwide (no affiliation with Marvel’s Toy Biz).
4. Management: Marvel finally got rid of the checkered personalities that drove the company
bankrupt and into chaos and replaced them with business folks who had the company’s best
interests in mind. Marvel also restructured/simplified the management organization
structure by reducing the number of directors on the board, centralizing the CEO and COO
functions under one person, and eliminating management positions that did not fall directly
into the 3 new business units.
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