What is Labubu? Why are Pop Mart’s blind boxes so addictive? From the thrill of unboxing to the cultural phenomenon of “ugly cute” characters, these whimsical creations have captured the hearts (and wallets) of Gen Z.
In this episode of Impulso Podcast, Jianggan, Sabrina, and special guest Phyllis—our resident Pop Mart enthusiast—dive into the fascinating world of Pop Mart. Tune in as we unpack the company’s innovative business model, its exclusive IPs, and the meteoric rise that has turned Pop Mart into a global powerhouse generating billions in revenue.
With a growing portfolio of IPs and even their own theme park, could Pop Mart be setting its sights on becoming the next Disney? The big question remains: can Pop Mart build a deep emotional connection to its characters, or is this just another fleeting trend?
Watch the episode here:
Also available on Spotify and Apple Podcast
[AI-generated transcript]
Sabrina: [00:00:00] Hi everyone, this is episode 103 of the Impulso Podcast and today we have a very special guest joining us. So this is Phyllis.
Phyllis: Hi, I’m Phyllis.
Jianggan: You might have heard her name over the last few episodes because she’s usually behind a camera.
Sabrina: Yes, but today we’re going to be talking about a very interesting topic.
Sabrina: So we’re going to be talking about Pop Mart. And Phyllis is our expert on Pop Marts, which is why we have invited her onto this podcast, right? So maybe just start, Changgan, do you know what Pop Mart is?
Jianggan: Of course I know what Pop Mart is. I have a few friends who invested in that. But again, what is that?
Sabrina: It’s the consumer side, so why is this?
Phyllis: This is my favourite, Labubu. I spent 40 on this, which I think is a great steal. That’s a good transition to our next question, right? What’s
Jianggan: the, why is that a steal?
Phyllis: The average Labobo retails for about 50, and if you want specific characters, then you can buy them for about 300.
Jianggan: Okay.
Phyllis: On, like, carousel or something.
Jianggan: So how do [00:01:00] you manage to steal?
Phyllis: My friend bought like a lot of blind boxes and she had an extra one and she decided that she doesn’t want two pink ones, so she sold it to me at a steal.
Jianggan: Oh, that was by chance. Yeah, that’s
Sabrina: the thing because PopMart has a blind box model, right?
Sabrina: So recently there’s been a very, very big PopMart craze, right? If you go to the next slide, you’ll see that they’ve been a lot of younger people, Gen Z, who have been queuing.
Jianggan: You are Gen Z.
Sabrina: I’m an older Gen Z. There’s a lot of younger Gen Z who have been queuing very, very long to buy Laboho toys.
Jianggan: Someone is playing identity politics.
Sabrina: Yeah, I’m in the middle, guys. But the thing is, why do consumers buy Pop Mart? Why do you buy Pop Mart, please?
Phyllis: Firstly, I love paying. And secondly, once you start, it’s really an addiction and you cannot stop. So because it’s blind boxes and they have series, so when you buy one and then it’s not the one you want you feel even more compelled to continue buying to get the one you want or you get the one you want and then you want to complete the collection.
Phyllis: So it’s [00:02:00] just a never ending vicious cycle.
Jianggan: But how, what got you started in the first place? Right? Because yesterday we’re talking to you about this and clearly you didn’t know.
Phyllis: She did
Sabrina: not want to buy a Lamborghini. No. Oh.
Phyllis: I actually started buying Sony Angels, like the little, cute little baby because I think that that was super cute.
Phyllis: And then after that, everyone was buying Labubus and I saw, oh, actually this thing is like kind of ugly cute. You know, like the kind of ugly cute thing that you buy. My friend mentioned this to me at a still and I was like, okay, I’m gonna get something that everyone has a still.
Phyllis: Bye Yes
Jianggan: Obviously,
Sabrina: we know love who is very popular now, right and I think the craze was brought about By Blackpink’s Lisa, so she carries this on her back And that’s why
Jianggan: So
Sabrina: she’s a member of black pink, which is a really famous k pop group [00:03:00] They are um, very famous korean pop group.
Sabrina: So lisa is one of the members of the group so when la booboo first blew up a lot of people were questioning it right because It’s not Conventionally cute.
Sabrina: It is like what Phyllis said. It’s ugly cute. So obviously when you speak to a lot of I’m sure if you speak to people, do they talk to you about Labubu?
Jianggan: As in, what?
Sabrina: Like, why do people buy Labubu?
Jianggan: I have so many people ask me that question. Why? I say, why would you ask me?
Sabrina: Yeah, but it’s an interesting question, right?
Sabrina: But obviously their business model is working. Plus, Potmart itself is a very successful company. So if you guys are interested, obviously when we look at how good a company is, we look at their financial statements, right? So Popmart actually is a public company. If you guys who buy Popmart and are interested in knowing how well the company you’re giving your money to is doing, you can check out their financial statements.
Sabrina: They’ve been listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange since 2020. And in 2023, they had about 6. 3 billion yuan in revenue.
Sabrina: But [00:04:00] I think, of course, today’s episode, we’re not going to focus on the numbers. If you guys are interested in that, there are probably a bunch of analyst reports.
Sabrina: They also have an IPO prospectus and financial statements that you guys can look at. But today, what we want to talk a little bit about is kind of the team behind PopMart. So, PopMart was founded in 2010 by Wang Ning. Who, he looks quite young.
Jianggan: he has the fashionista style.
Sabrina: Yeah, it’s fashionista.
Jianggan: My point is that some things, if you look at it, you don’t pay attention.
Jianggan: If you look at it in detail, it feels weird. If you look at it long enough, you start to Sort of fall in love with it.
Jianggan: Because Phyllis Lavoie has been in the office for like a few weeks. And at first I was saying that, okay. Do
Sabrina: you think he’s cute now?
Jianggan: No, I didn’t think it was ugly. I thought it was weird, but
Sabrina: it
Jianggan: looks kind of cute now.
Sabrina: So, it’s a human nature thing, right? The more you look at something, you either really start to like it or you really start to hate it.
Jianggan: Oh, have you read that book called Japanese Monsters? [00:05:00] So basically it’s a book of a list take. And it tells about all the monsters in Japanese folklore. Like one page, I mean, ghosts, monsters, you know. Please
Phyllis: bring the book. I would love to read that.
Jianggan: It’s this thick and I bought that in a bookstore in Beijing. And I checked out the counter and the cashier was like, What’s wrong with you guys? I mean, this is like the fourth book I’ve sold of this in the last half an hour.
Sabrina: Wait, but it’s an interesting book. It’s a book that you wouldn’t find. People are interested in monsters. But
Phyllis: folklore sells quite well.
Phyllis: Especially when you have a character and then there’s a story behind it.
Sabrina: IP guys, we are going to dive into this in a bit, but before that, obviously when we look at how our company is doing, we look at their numbers and then we also look at the team behind it, right?
Sabrina: So, Jianghan, you’ve, you know, a couple of investors who have invested in a pockmark.
Jianggan: I mean, not in the public market because when first we went to the public market, I think it was 2020 or 2019. And most people were skeptical because honestly, most commission investors didn’t understand this business model.
Jianggan: Didn’t understand why [00:06:00] people crazy about it. So I know a bunch of guys who invested in a company in the very early days when this guy was just starting up and heard some of the stories, right? I mean, they were saying that, okay, at that time, I think some investors form a thesis. They said, okay, the sort of the fashion toy kind of category that’s worth one investment.
Jianggan: So this can all the companies in that industry. So pop mind was one of them. And at the time I think a small retailer, in Hong Kong. They said of all the top ten companies in this category that he has spoken to, PopMart founder is the only one who doesn’t know anything about financial projection, about, you know, I mean, benchmark and stuff.
Jianggan: He said, I have no idea, I don’t know. I mean, how big is this market? I don’t know.
Sabrina: But he still chose to invest in them, even though
Jianggan: I mean, that guy had the interesting thesis. He said, okay, the other nine companies spoke to and every founder had like no impeccable tech presentation deck to him saying that this is our business and this is our benchmark in Korea, in Japan, in the U S and this is what we look at chief in 10 years time.[00:07:00]
Jianggan: It’s very easy to poke holes into the projection. I mean, they came very prepared, but this guy looked very genuine. He was really passionate about what he was doing, and he did a site visit to his office and people really looking at doors coming here and stuff, which is very different from a opportunistic startup.
Jianggan: So his thesis that there must be some value behind it.
Sabrina: So he senses that the founding team is very passionate about.
Jianggan: I think just passion is not enough, but he says there’s something very different about this. Something that he didn’t understand. I think it kind of makes sense, right? If amongst 10 companies in the sector, he has to choose one company to bet, this is probably a good bet.
Jianggan: He made it 40 times.
Sabrina: That was my next question. Did he manage to cash out a good amount? 40 times? He made it
Jianggan: 40 times, but he said he didn’t anticipate that it could actually go well. Even much bigger after that.
Sabrina: That’s interesting.
Sabrina: So when we’re talking about IP, right, obviously we know PopMart [00:08:00] relies a lot on IP to sell their products. And of course they have non exclusive IPs and then they also have Exclusive IP.
Sabrina: So the non exclusive IPs are kind of like Harry Potter,, Sunreal characters like Hello Kitty, Disney characters that they sell. But of course, and I think this is something that Phyllis, even as a consumer of PopMart, you didn’t know, right? Of course I did not.
Jianggan: So she didn’t just found out yesterday that, I mean, this is a designer behind
Sabrina: Labububu.
Sabrina: So for those of you who are interested in Labububu, , is actually the guy who Works behind the scenes to create Laou. And of course Laou is an exclusive IP to Potm mat. So Potm mat works actually with quite a number of different designers to create this kind of ips. Right.
Sabrina: And of course, Laou is part of the monster series, which is designed by cussing donkey from Hong Kong.
Sabrina: For those who love Labumu right, you can check out his Instagram page. Um. He has a lot of photos at all.
Sabrina: And in the next, if you can [00:09:00] show the
Jianggan: family, right?
Phyllis: Yes. The monster family, he actually created labu first. And then after that pop up bought the labu IP over from him. So then he started working
Sabrina: in pop up after
Jianggan: that.
Sabrina: So it was under pop up that he started creating like the rest of the monsters. Yeah. So they also have a bunch of their own other characters, right?
Sabrina: So they have like Molly. They have Deemo, Hirono, Skullpanda. All of these are IPs that they work closely with designers to create.
Jianggan: Yeah. So my friend who invested in that company was, was telling me that one caveat of why he decided to invest in this company, aside from, oh, wow, this guy’s passion is that guy already had exclusive agreements with quite a number of designers.
Jianggan: He said, at least this thing will be of sound value.
Sabrina: So he already started working with them and they invest quite a lot into this IP. So I was looking through their prospectus, right? They spend about 822 million Hong Kong dollars to expand their IP pool. So this includes of course, sourcing for new designers.
Sabrina: [00:10:00] If I’m not wrong they go to like conventions and all sometimes just to find new designers to work with.
But
Sabrina: of course, if let’s say this is your business model, right? You have so many SKUs. How do you manage? Your supply chain or your retail stock, because obviously you’re selling one.
Sabrina: You’re selling blind boxes, not just blind boxes. I think they have more blind box items as well. Right. And you have such a large variety of SKU because you have your non exclusive IPs. You have your exclusive
IPs and
Sabrina: these are apartment itself operates almost 300 plus retail stores globally.
And
Sabrina: they even have their apartment vending machines.
Sabrina: Right. So how do they manage all these? How do you know when, when to get rid of some?
Sabrina: What do you think?
Jianggan: I think this company has has sort of found a way to manage the whole IP operations. There are a couple issues that you have to deal with when it comes to this.
Jianggan: I mean, first, I mean, how to control the channels, right? So the last thing you want is that people Using these ips , and people sort of selling it this different prices. For instance, you got one at [00:11:00] $40 Yeah. From your friend. But usually I think for lot of these companies, if they don’t control their channel, well you have the goods flooding the market and, and people like no competing on prices control everything.
Jianggan: I think pop market controls everything. I heard that even for their live streaming operations in Southeast Asia. They control everything, I mean, from China. So they don’t send their goods across different channels, but they do that through their own channels.
Sabrina: So they manage the supply chain themselves?
Jianggan: They manage the distribution, basically, yeah.
Sabrina: They don’t give anyone else the rights?
Jianggan: I don’t think so. They have their stores in different places. You’ve been to the stores in Singapore? You have been, obviously.
Phyllis: Which ones? Plaza Sing one is the biggest one.
Jianggan: So the first store in Singapore was at the Funai mall.
Jianggan: Funai mall is like a young trendy kind of space. So when they first opened that store there, so that was when people started paying attention and say, Hey, here’s this company from China.
Jianggan: I’m coming out to Southeast Asia. I think about less than a year into his [00:12:00] operations. Somebody who is close to them was telling me that, Oh that store just broke a record as the world record, 70, 000 sales over one night.
Sabrina: Was it like, was there a special launch? Yeah, there was, there was
Jianggan: some event.
Jianggan: I don’t know where to follow their events, but, uh,
Phyllis: You mean
Jianggan: the
Phyllis: Funan store in particular?
Jianggan: The Funan store. I think that was like two years ago or something. Yeah, so there was one sale, 70, 000. And that was before Pop Mart started expanding to Indonesia, to Thailand, to the Philippines.
Jianggan: I think they launched a store in Thailand recently, which performed really well.
Sabrina: So actually they manage quite a couple of channels, right? So they have, of course they distribute to like, the social media influencers and all that they work with, but retail is also a pretty big channel for them.
Sabrina: So when we looked at their prospectus, a big proportion of their revenue actually comes from retail channels. And I think, but that has something to do probably with the consumer mindset, right? If you’re buying a blind box, so
Jianggan: yeah, she’s not even going to agree with me.
Sabrina: Consumers feel that. If they go down to the store and buy the product, [00:13:00] maybe they can sense which product it is.
Sabrina: There are people who bring like, who try to weigh the products,
Phyllis: right? For some people, they try to weigh it, or like, they try to feel it. And then there’s also the added thrill of opening it immediately, and then realising that you get the one you want. It’s kind of like the thrill of gambling, you know?
Phyllis: It’s a little bit like gambling, I would say. Yeah, that’s the concept of like, this is kind
Jianggan: of. So what happens when you open it, and it doesn’t turn out to be the one you want? Then you gotta know! Yeah.
Sabrina: So then that’s the good thing about opening it in store, right? The moment, the moment you open it and it’s not the one you want, you just walk back in and grab another box.
Sabrina: Yeah.
Jianggan: Until you, until you get one.
Sabrina: Yes. Sounds like very poor. But this is not
Jianggan: exactly gambling, right? So this is that you pay money for the things of a certain value. You just don’t know. Well, this is a particular design you want, but essentially get the same product.
Sabrina: Yes.
Sabrina: This is a very common kind of strategy that’s used in not just popup, but in online games as well. Right. So they have this gamification feature where sometimes the items [00:14:00] or the products that you get are randomized and then you have to keep trying or keep spending money to get games.
Jianggan: But here, get a real cute goal
Sabrina: if you, if you buy it from the resale market, usually still at
Jianggan: a high price.
Sabrina: Actually you can, yeah. What is the highest price you’ve seen a labubu being resold for?
Phyllis: There are the really, really big labubus. Those you can resell for five times of the retail price. What’s the retail price? It’s like two, three hundred. I think you can sell for like thousands. Which is insane to just
Sabrina: Interesting.
Phyllis: For a doll that does nothing. Maybe we should get one for the office.
Sabrina: We buy from second hand market or we
Jianggan: I once had a Darth Vader in the office. Nobody
Sabrina: was stealing the labubu. Only Phyllis was stealing the labubu. That’s your only concern.
Phyllis: Eh, labubu very valuable now eh. People are stealing it. Oh yeah, do you
Sabrina: know, so, Phyllis was telling me right before the podcast, recently they’ve changed the keychain on [00:15:00] labubus, because people have been stealing labubus, like, off people’s bags.
Sabrina: So it’s a big Gen Z trend now to hang, like, keychains on your bag. And there have been chasers where So
Jianggan: basically, basically, this is, this keychain is more steal proof.
Sabrina: This is not the newer one. Okay. Okay. So now they have a newer model. Um, maybe we’ll find a photo. Didn’t change
Phyllis: it. They are buying specialized key chains for their labu boos.
Phyllis: Papa didn’t change
Sabrina: it. So there are people selling specialized key chains to lock your bubu to your back.
Do
Sabrina: you know there also people selling clothes for Laboo? Yes. So there’s a whole like other market built on top of these.
Jianggan: Interesting because you create ecosystem, right? You create this IP and around the IP, there are people who consume, there are people who actually produce and that becomes a ecosystem.
Sabrina: Yes. It’s very similar to kind of what I would say, maybe a less evolved stage of the Disney ecosystem, right? That’s obviously also how Disney started. They had their IPs and of course, branching out from the IPs, they started to have much, they [00:16:00] have collaborations. Does Labooboo have any collaborations with anyone?
Sabrina: Not that I can recall. Not yet. They have collaborations. And now PopMart has even opened their own theme park.
Jianggan: Oh, their own theme park? Yeah,
Sabrina: so recently they opened a theme park in Beijing. Yes, Beijing. Where it’s Just a land of all the IPs. So essentially, I want to say it’s like Disneyland, but when I was doing some research online, they say it’s more comparable to maybe the Studio Ghibli theme park.
Sabrina: Theme park in Japan, as compared to Disneyland in terms of What is the Studio
Jianggan: Ghibli?
Sabrina: Okay, so Studio Ghibli is this Japanese animation company who makes really nice movies, like House Moving Castle,
Sabrina: spirited
Sabrina: away and all.
Sabrina: So they have a sort of theme park in Japan. Where they just have sort of set design of the movie scenes that they have.
Jianggan: So what do we expect next? Like Pop Mart Cruise?
Sabrina: Oh my god, that’d be so fun. Because
Jianggan: Disney Cruise is pretty popular in
Sabrina: It’s possible. I feel like if you build a good enough IP, right, and it’s something that consumers really [00:17:00] like, and build an emotional connection with, you can sell them anything.
Jianggan: I think for theme park or for cruise, you need an assortment of IPs more popular now. And You probably want the consumers to grow a little bit with more spending power, maybe like bring their kids and stuff. So the key thing, here is to say, is to see that, okay, I mean, the IPs that, that are really popular here, MOLI, Labobo, et cetera.
Jianggan: Labobo. Are they just popular for like one or two years, even three to five years, or they have the lasting power? This is something we don’t know yet. I think that depends on operations of Popcorn as a company and Disney has done a lot over like a century. Disney has
Sabrina: a lot of storytelling elements as well.
Sabrina: Like its IPs are not just a character on its own, but usually it’s embedded in like a movie or a story. So that helps. You can constantly create,
Jianggan: yeah. Create a story. That’s about it. And
Sabrina: then you can make like 10 movies. Different remakes of the same movie, right? So that’s how you build like emotional connection.
Sabrina: Whereas for PopMart, I think most of their characters are just characters on its own.
And
Sabrina: like you said, how long can they last in popularity, right? La Boubou has been around for a while,
but
Sabrina: only [00:18:00] recently became very, very popular. There are other characters who are not as popular, but we spoke to some people yesterday and they said that they were glad that the PopMart characters they like weren’t as popular
Jianggan: because it makes it
Sabrina: a lot harder to get it as a consumer, right?
Jianggan: Which is interesting because, in that way you have, we talked about locking sort of product strategy, right? I mean, they have like a hundred plus new products launched each year and only a few of them will be wild, wildly popular, but the others would appeal to self reliant audiences who might not find the mainstream.
Jianggan: Who might not find Labobo or Monipop more interesting, but they have their niche. So PopMart is having those markets served as well.
Phyllis: So
Jianggan: it’s a good
Phyllis: thing. I think for someone who likes both Disney and La Bouboule right, I know, very dangerous. Um, I relate a lot more to Disney. Like my favorite Disney character is Winnie the Pooh because I used to watch it as a child.
Phyllis: Winnie
Jianggan: the Pooh, dangerous.
Phyllis: Yeah. And [00:19:00] I watched a lot of the cartoons and movies. So then, even now as a 23 year old, I’ll still buy Winnie the Pooh stuff. But I only bought LaBooBoo because it was a craze, right? And there’s not much storytelling behind LaBooBoo. Like, LaBooBoo has a boyfriend. But I didn’t know that until I was researching yesterday.
Jianggan: LaBoo, what, LaBoo has a
Phyllis: LaBoo, LaBooBoo is a girl. LaBooBoo is
Jianggan: female? Yes!
Phyllis: And her boyfriend is called like, Zee, Zee Momo or something like that. He’s the brown one. We’ll add a photo to show you guys. He’s the brown one with the tail. Yeah. So, I think because of Disney’s storytelling with all the movies, right, that it creates a lot more emotional connection.
Phyllis: So people are buying it because, you know, they can relate to this character, or it related to them since they were young, so they buy it. Nostalgia. Yeah. That’s
Sabrina: something that Disney also relies pretty heavily on.
Phyllis: Labubu is more of like a passing phase for now. Maybe in the future, if they create more movies or stories, then, you know, kids 20 years later will be saying like, Oh, I used to buy Labubu, and I still buy Labubu now.
Phyllis: But that’s the thing, right? With exclusive
Sabrina: IP [00:20:00] rights, I mean, they can consider
Jianggan: They can, they can. I mean, Popbarn has been able to operate that fairly well across social media channels, across retail channels, across different kinds of distribution. But whether they can create stories, whether they can get this IP stuff lasting power, whether they want this IP stuff lasting power, I am pretty sure these are the things that they have been thinking about.
Jianggan: And whether they do it or not, or how well they can do it, I mean, I think it’ll be something interesting to watch.
Sabrina: Can support them by supporting Labubu and buying more. If you guys are interested. So thank you guys for tuning into another episode of the impossible podcast.
Sabrina: We hope that you guys enjoyed today’s episode where we talked about something a little more interesting and more relatable to the consumers. If you guys are interested, do like, and share this video as well as subscribe to our YouTube channel to stay up to date on the latest trends and happening in tech, new retail, and the broader digital economy.
Sabrina: Thank you.
Jianggan: Bye bye.
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