Pop Mart's largest flagship store in Europe has opened, how to navigate the "second half" of the overseas expansion of trendy toy brands? | Overseas

On September 12, Pop Mart's largest flagship store in Europe officially opened on Boulevard Haussmann in Paris, marking its 5th offline store in the French capital.

Boulevard Haussmann is one of the most representative retail and cultural destinations in Paris, home to Galeries Lafayette, Printemps, and luxury brands including LV, Dior and Gucci. The newly opened store on Boulevard Haussmann covers an area of 1400 to 1500 square meters, with a dedicated exhibition area for IP-themed exhibitions and joint artist showcases, downplaying the sales-oriented attribute and highlighting artistic and cultural experiences.

On the trial operation day of September 8, a user shared on Douyin that there was "a huge crowd of people at the store, and you had to queue for more than an hour to get in". Many people failed to enter the store that day and only got access successfully when they returned the next day. On the opening day, the store launched 7 limited-edition products priced from 36 euros to 1200 euros. The store follows the globally consistent design style, with white as the main tone, paired with luminous display racks and IP statues.

Since 2026, Pop Mart's overseas business has entered an adjustment period, with its store opening strategy shifting from "quantity priority" to "quality far outweighs quantity", and early stores have been further upgraded through relocation, expansion and renovation.

Against the backdrop of Goldman Sachs data showing that the global market share of Chinese designer toys has risen from about 3% in 2020 to 18% in 2025, more Chinese designer toy brands are accelerating their overseas expansion, and the Chinese designer toy industry is evolving from a single leading brand to a brand cluster.

01

Setting Foot in Paris

The Opening Scene of the Largest Flagship Store in Europe

It is no surprise to the outside world that Pop Mart has located its largest European flagship store in Paris.

Paris is undoubtedly the most important fashion and luxury consumption center in Europe, and Galeries Lafayette and Printemps on Boulevard Haussmann receive tens of millions of global tourists annually. In terms of market performance, Europe is one of the few overseas regions that maintained positive growth for Pop Mart in the first half of 2026, with revenue reaching 506 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of 5.9%, of which offline channels increased by 49.8% year-on-year.

Previously, Pop Mart had 4 offline stores in Paris: the Châtelet store opened in February 2023 was its first directly-operated store in Europe; in July 2024, Pop Mart became the first Chinese designer toy brand to settle in the Louvre; in the same year, it also opened a pop-up store on the 6th floor of Galeries Lafayette; in April 2025, the La Défense store opened.

On the same day that the Boulevard Haussmann store opened, Pop Mart's largest domestic flagship store also officially opened at Hangzhou Hubin Intime in77, covering an area of over 1000 square meters.

Different from the Paris store that exhibits multiple classic IPs such as MOLLY, SKULLPANDA and LABUBU, the entire building of the Hangzhou store centers on the most popular Starman this year, with a giant Starman installation on the roof. The feature of the Boulevard Haussmann store is the launch of 7 opening-limited products with a price range of 36 to 1200 euros, and the highest price is significantly higher than that of previous overseas stores.

Launching localized limited-edition products in overseas stores has always been Pop Mart's consistent practice. Earlier, the ICONSIAM flagship store in Thailand launched limited-edition products integrating local cultural elements, such as Crybaby Tuk-tuk, the golden spire of the MOLLY Grand Palace, SKULLPANDA Thai milk tea color, and the SPACE MOLLY mango sticky rice design.

Due to logistics and localization process restrictions, it is difficult for Pop Mart's new products to be released in full synchronization overseas as in the Chinese mainland. For some popular IPs such as LABUBU, a lottery purchase system is adopted, where consumers need to register online, select a store, and go to the store to purchase with their identity documents after winning the lottery.

02

Year of Overseas Adjustment: Pop Mart's Offline Strategy

Shifting from "Quantity Priority" to "Quality Priority"

Pop Mart's financial report for the first half of 2026 shows that overseas market revenue reached 4.97 billion yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 11%. By region, Pop Mart's revenue in the Asia-Pacific (excluding China) and the Americas markets both declined. Although Europe and other regions maintained positive growth, the growth rate was only 5.9%.

From the perspective of channels, the poor performance of Pop Mart in the first half of 2026 is mainly due to the sluggish online channels, with the official online channel sales revenue in the Asia-Pacific and the Americas markets falling by 39.8% and 44.6% year-on-year respectively. In contrast, offline channels still maintained growth, with year-on-year growth of 16.2%, 19.5% and 49.8% in the Asia-Pacific, Americas and Europe offline channels respectively.

The core reason for the sluggish online channels is the fading of the "one-off traffic" of LABUBU overseas in 2025. Pop Mart is also working to reduce the overseas market's dependence on the single IP of LABUBU through the construction of a multi-IP matrix and regionally differentiated IP development.

Although the development of regionally differentiated IPs has achieved results in many markets, according to Pop Mart's 2026 interim financial report, non-LABUBU products account for about 50% of revenue in the US market; non-LABUBU series products have taken the majority share in Japan, South Korea and Southeast Asia markets; Hirono has a certain influence in the Philippines, CRYBABY in Thailand, and SKULLPANDA in Singapore.

However, in the short term, these emerging IPs are not yet sufficient to become the "main force" supporting the performance growth of online channels.

Against the background of online pressure and offline growth, Pop Mart has upgraded its offline channels to the "foundation" and experience center for long-term brand growth, and its store opening strategy has shifted from "quantity priority" to "quality far outweighs quantity".

In order to make the brand image and operation level of global stores more unified and strengthen brand awareness, the management stated that a store size of around 200 square meters has been defined as the global standard flagship store model. "Stores that were not operated successfully in the early stage need to be adjusted. For new stores, we strictly check the location, area and business terms. If the requirements are not met, we would rather wait," said Si De, Co-COO of Pop Mart, at the performance conference call.

He revealed that the overall adjustment measures have been implemented in all regions: the European team has re-examined all planned and under-negotiation stores, renegotiated business terms for some stores, and directly abandoned some projects; for the early stores that have been opened, operational efficiency has been improved through relocation, expansion and renovation upgrades, and some small stores of less than 100 square meters have been moved to better locations with the store area expanded to 150-200 square meters.

In addition, Pop Mart has intensified its efforts to open landmark flagship stores in core cities around the world. In 2026, the company plans to open large flagship stores in Milan, London, Paris and New York. Among them, the New York Times Square flagship store is located at 1540 Broadway, covering an area of about 650 square meters, with a 10-year lease signed. It and the Fifth Avenue flagship store are both planned to open in the fourth quarter.

At the same time, Pop Mart has reached a cooperation with Simon Property Group of the United States, planning to layout stores in more than 20 core shopping malls across the United States, extending from core business districts to outlet malls.

As of June 30, 2026, Pop Mart operates 676 stores and 2827 robot stores worldwide, including 419 in Chinese mainland, 36 in Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan, 90 in the Asia-Pacific, 86 in the Americas, and 45 in Europe and other regions. In the first half of 2026, 36 new stores were added overseas, including 22 in the Americas, 9 in Europe, and 5 in the Asia-Pacific.

03

Leading Brand Adjustment

Impressive Growth of New Overseas Expansion Players

From the overall situation of Chinese designer toys going global, Pop Mart's "downsizing" of offline channels cannot be simply attributed to problems in its own business growth.

Goldman Sachs research shows that the global market share of Chinese designer toys has risen from about 3% in 2020 to 18% in 2025. As more and more Chinese brands enter overseas markets, the overseas expansion of Chinese designer toys is evolving from a "scale expansion period" to a "quality differentiation period". This means that Pop Mart is no longer facing the growth narrative of "comparing only with itself".

A similar situation to Pop Mart is MINISO. Its designer toy brand TOP TOY turned from profit to loss in the first half of 2026, recording an operating loss of 72.34 million yuan. The main brand MINISO's overseas business is also under pressure. Ye Guofu, founder, Chairman and CEO of MINISO, said at the 2026 interim performance conference call that the company has decided to slow down the speed of overseas store expansion, concentrate resources on deep cultivation of existing markets, add 40-50 new directly-operated stores overseas while reducing 100-110 agency stores.

In contrast, the "new players" have achieved impressive growth. Blokees, a building toy brand known as "China's Lego", recorded overseas revenue of 366 million yuan in the first half of 2026, a year-on-year increase of 228.5%, accounting for 20.6% of its total revenue, mainly expanding by entering offline supermarket channels such as Walmart.

Qimengdao completed its transformation by acquiring the designer toy brand letsvan in July 2025. Focusing on plush pendants as core products, it adopts the "distribution network + pop-up store" model to expand overseas markets. Its products have been sold to 27 countries and regions, and its IPs such as WAKUKU have gained high attention on overseas social platforms.

Although Pop Mart still has a significant market share advantage in overseas markets, second-tier companies are forming effective complement and competition with differentiated product categories and regional strategies. The "second half" of designer toys going global no longer focuses on who opens stores faster and covers more areas, but who has thicker IP assets, deeper localization and healthier channel structure.

Only brands that can precipitate temporary hits into long-term IP vitality can stay in the game.

*The information and opinions contained in this article do not constitute any investment advice and are for reference only.

This article is from the WeChat official account "Zhejiang Enterprises Overseas Comprehensive Service Port".