Lootcrate files for bankruptcy??!!

By Mark Rodriguez

So it wasn't long ago that I heard many complaints towards Lootcrate, the subscription box service that pretty much started the whole subscription box craze. Boxes from April were arriving as late as August, and due to the nature of auto-renew, customers were still getting charged for the months in between with no boxes in sight. And to make it worse, by the time they got their box, they were missing items. Not just one thing, but sometimes half the box's worth of items! Even the shirt, which for many people is the main selling point of the box!

So for those that don't know, Lootcrate is (or maybe, was) a monthly subscription box with different items and themes. The main box would be around overall geeky goodies, things related to Star Trek, Star Wars, Ghostbusters, Ninja Turtles, Marvel superheroes, Rick and Morty and whatever else. The themed boxes would be things like LootAnime, LootGaming, and LootFear with things related to their namesakes. There's also a Fallout Crate, a WWE Slam Crate and a Harry Potter related crate called JK Rowling's Wizarding World. There's even a Retro Remix crate full of previous items mixed from all crates.

Well last night Lootcrate has officially filed for bankruptcy, and they have laid off several of their employees leaving about 60 out of over 300 people working there. On top of that rumors of financial trouble have been floating around for a while, like Funko wanting to sue them and defaulting on a 21 million dollar loan in 2017. The plan is to potentially sell to one of their investors.

Lootcrate does promise to ship out all remaining boxes, but at the rate they're going, that might take the rest of the year, and they might still be missing items anyway. All of this is starting to sound a bit like Nerd Block, and while the Lootcrate site looks normal now where you can still sign up for one of their many boxes..  the site may very well up and vanish one of these days leaving customers high and dry. It's sad to say this, but right now is possibly the worst time to subscribe to them.

My main concern is that if Lootcrate goes down it doesn't drag down everybody along with it. I'm not 100% sure how popular subscription boxes are to the mainstream and people not particularly into geek culture... but chances are if someone's heard of sub boxes they'll sooner think of Lootcrate than say... the Geek Fuel Box. Or they'll say "oh, kinda like Lootcrate, right?"

Some of the stuff we used to get, when LootCrate was good

With so many boxes either going out of business or switching to quarterly, hence becoming more expensive, I'm worried if Lootcrate bombs the common everyday person will just assume all sub boxes went down, that it's a failing business and not worth subscribing to. While it's true trying to go into business for yourself and creating your own monthly subscription service is a gamble, there are still some good ones out there.

My personal favorite box is the ProWrestlingCrate, which is owned by the guys at ProWrestlingTees and they seem to have come connections to AEW and sponsor promotions like RISE Women's Wrestling. I hope the possibility of Lootcrate potentially crashing and burning won't affect the other sub boxes. We'll have to see if Lootcrate will go down fighting or if they will pull a vanishing act.