POP MART: How a $10 Toy Built China a Global Retail Empire

Just three years ago, Labubu was a niche item for designer-toy collectors. Today it's a global phenomenon: sales of that single character line reached 14.16 billion yuan in 2025 — up 365.7% year-on-year, about 38% of the company's total revenue. Analysts project POP MART's 2026 revenue at 48.77 billion yuan, up 30% from 37.47 billion yuan in 2025, with founder and CEO Wang Ning publicly targeting growth of "no less than 20%."

Overseas retail is growing three times faster than domestic

The shape of that growth is telling. Overseas sales are projected to grow 35.7% in 2026 versus 13% domestically — meaning the international business is now growing almost three times faster than the home market. Overseas revenue already made up 52% of the total in 2025 and is projected to climb to 69% by 2030. For a Chinese consumer brand, that's a rare ratio — even successful exporters typically stay predominantly domestic businesses for years.

From vending machines to full stores across three continents

As of January 2026, POP MART runs over 1,000 full-format stores and 2,597 "Robo Shops" — its branded vending machines dispensing blind-box toys — across 18 countries. Overseas points of sale grew from 218 to 331 over the reporting period, and the US store network is set to expand from 72 to more than 100 locations during 2026. This isn't a one-off marketing push — it's systematic physical footprint expansion, exactly the retail format that's hardest for competitors to copy.

Why this doesn't read like a typical Chinese export story

The standard Chinese consumer-export playbook is to compete on price in a mass market. POP MART did the opposite: it built premium positioning around the "blind box" mechanic and artist collaborations, so a product costing roughly $10-20 sells with hype, queues, and a resale market at multiples of retail price. That's a model that can't be replicated through price dumping alone — it takes character design, IP franchising, and deliberate supply scarcity management.

For anyone studying Chinese retail beyond electronics and manufacturing, POP MART is an instructive case: a brand born in offline retail in Beijing built a global premium retail network in a few years without a single factory outside China. On the flagship retail showrooms expedition you can see how these points of sale actually work — from window design to limited-drop logistics — and the companies catalogue has the company's own profile and growth history.