The mini version of LABUBU is here! The sales volume has exceeded 1 million, and the second-hand price has soared to 2,000 yuan | Overseas Insights

At 10 p.m. on August 28th, the "Mini LABUBU" was officially launched for sale online. As expected, it was sold out as soon as it went on sale. The official page of Pop Mart's Tmall flagship store showed that the number of people adding the blind box of vinyl plush keychains priced at 79 yuan each to their shopping carts before the sale exceeded 700,000. By 11 p.m. that night, the total sales volume on platforms such as Douyin, Taobao, and JD.com reached 1.078 million pieces.

Moreover, the second - hand platforms had already witnessed a rush to buy even before the official sale. On Xianyu, many sellers listed the Mini LABUBU, with prices ranging from 100 to 2,500 yuan. On the second - hand trading platform for trendy collectibles, "Qiandao", the trading volume had been increasing since August 22nd. By the time before the official sale, 251 pieces had been sold, with an average price of 1,920.77 yuan.

(Caption: Partial price information of second - hand Mini LABUBU on Xianyu and Qiandao App)

Compared with the regular LABUBU, the Mini version continues the iconic vinyl plush design but is only the size of a palm. It is divided into two series according to the letters A - M and N - Z, with each series containing 14 regular styles and 1 hidden style. Each blind box costs 79 yuan, and a single set costs 1,106 yuan.

"People can even hang it on their phones. It will have more usage scenarios, and I believe it will be a super - popular hit," said Wang Ning, the chairman and CEO of Pop Mart, when announcing the launch of the Mini version at the 2025 mid - year performance press conference a few days ago.

Currently, the Mini version has also started to be sold offline. At the opening on the 29th, Pop Mart's stock price slightly dropped by 0.49%, closing at 322.8 Hong Kong dollars per share, with a market value of HK$433.5 billion.

From being ignored

To becoming a global top - tier IP

In the past year, LABUBU has several times triggered global media frenzies. This picture - book IP designed by the Hong Kong designer Long Jiasheng was signed by Pop Mart in 2019. After being ignored for several years, thanks to the promotion on social media by international stars such as the South Korean girl - group star Lisa, Rihanna, and Kim Kardashian, LABUBU suddenly became the most - watched global top - tier IP in 2024.

The news of LABUBU's popularity overseas soon spread to China. Many domestic stars took LABUBU out on the streets, actively "promoting" it, which further ignited the purchasing enthusiasm of domestic consumers. The rush to buy spread to the second - hand market, and the market premium of LABUBU continued to rise. The wealth myth of making tens of thousands of yuan a day by reselling LABUBU also became a hot topic on social platforms.

In April 2025, Pop Mart launched LABUBU 3.0, pushing the purchasing frenzy to its peak. On the day of the launch, there were long queues at the Century City store in Los Angeles, USA. The next day, the Pop Mart app topped the shopping list on the US App Store. Due to the shortage of the original products, the regular blind boxes originally priced at 99 yuan were resold by scalpers in the second - hand market for several hundred yuan. Ordinary consumers could hardly buy them at the original price either online or in offline stores.

Along with the popularity of LABUBU, there has been a global spread of counterfeits such as "LAFUFU". Only in China, in 2024, Pop Mart was involved in more than 200 civil lawsuits and dozens of cases related to the counterfeit black - market industry. Customs in many places have successively seized more than a hundred thousand pieces of goods suspected of infringing on the copyright of "LABUBU" and other products.

The rush to buy also triggered public doubts about Pop Mart's scarcity marketing. Eventually, Pop Mart was forced to start the pre - sale replenishment model on June 18th, and then launched several batches of product pre - sales, which finally cooled down the "LABUBU fever" to some extent. The direction of public opinion gradually shifted to the speculation and expectation of the "next LABUBU".

The global popularity of LABUBU has directly driven a significant increase in Pop Mart's overall performance. The latest financial report shows that in the first half of 2025, Pop Mart's revenue reached 13.876 billion yuan, a year - on - year increase of 204.4%. The profit reached 6.043 billion yuan, a year - on - year increase of 436.5%. The revenue of the THE MONSTERS series represented by LABUBU increased significantly from 13.7% in the same period last year to 34.7%, exceeding the previous mainstream Molly series.

Recreate a Pop Mart overseas

To some extent, the success of LABUBU also proves the correctness of Pop Mart's overseas expansion strategy in the past three years. The financial report shows that in the first half of 2025, the company's overseas business revenue increased year - on - year by as much as 439.60%, and its proportion in the total revenue increased from 22% in the first half of 2024 to 40%. The higher product pricing in the overseas market further pushed up Pop Mart's gross profit margin to 70.3%.

Pop Mart's "going global" started in 2020. In September, its first overseas store opened in Seoul, South Korea. In 2021, Wen Deyi, then the vice - president and the president of overseas business of Pop Mart, said in an interview with "36Kr Going Global" that based on market research, Pop Mart first chose to expand in Japan, South Korea, Southeast Asia, and North America, focusing on trendy landmarks in core local cities.

In 2022, Pop Mart's domestic business showed signs of weakness, and its stock price once plummeted to 6.8 Hong Kong dollars, shrinking by more than 90% compared with the previous high of 105.2 Hong Kong dollars per share. Under this pressure, Wang Ning shifted the company's development focus to the overseas market, significantly increasing the overseas investment budget, and the speed of opening stores accelerated significantly.

By 2024, Pop Mart's overseas business revenue reached 5.065 billion yuan, exceeding the revenue scale in 2019, achieving the goal of "re - creating a Pop Mart overseas". In the annual financial report of that year, Wang Ning summarized the annual keyword of Pop Mart as "striving upwards and looking outwards".

Currently, Pop Mart has 571 offline stores in 18 countries around the world, of which 128 are overseas. Among the newly - opened 40 stores, 28 are overseas stores. Some media reported that Pop Mart has planned to open its first store in the Middle East in the second half of the year and will then enter markets such as South America and Russia.

Pop Mart has created another growth myth overseas, and its market value has continuously reached new highs. On the one hand, it has brought the trendy collectibles industry from a niche market into the spotlight of the capital market. Since the beginning of this year, trendy collectibles brands such as Kao You, Bruk, 52TOYS, and TOP TOY under Miniso have successively submitted prospectuses and are sprinting for IPO.

On the other hand, it has also driven the general trend of the entire trendy collectibles industry going global. Bruk has entered Southeast Asia and Europe and the United States through channels such as Amazon and Toys "R" Us. By the end of 2024, 52TOYS had 16 overseas authorized stores, and its overseas revenue had a compound annual growth rate of over 100%. In the first quarter of 2025, Miniso's overseas business revenue reached 1.59 billion yuan, with a year - on - year growth rate of up to 30%, becoming the company's most important growth engine.

The influence of Chinese trendy collectibles brands overseas has been continuously increasing, which has driven the internationalization of the Chinese toy manufacturing industry on a larger scale. Customs data shows that from January to July 2024, the toy export volume of Dongguan City exceeded 12 billion yuan, and the export destinations covered more than 100 countries and regions around the world.

While players are looking forward to the next LABUBU, trendy collectibles brands dream of becoming the next Pop Mart, and Wang Ning has set a revenue target of 30 billion yuan a year with the cute LABUBU.

This article is from the WeChat official account "Hangzhou Qiantang Enterprise Going Global Service Base". The author is Zhejiang Enterprises Going Global, and it is published with the authorization of Qiantang.