What comes after Labubu? Inside Pop Mart’s next grow play

Pop Mart knew Labubu would be a hit, but it didn’t expect the shaggy little elf-monster to take over the world. Then, almost as quickly, the question followed: Is the bubble about to pop?

It’s a pressure Pop Mart has learned to live with. Investors have been asking some version of that question for years – about Labubu, about the pouty-lipped Molly, about ruddy-cheeked Twinkle Twinkle – said Si De, the Beijing-based toymaker’s chief operating officer.

The Labubu craze has since cooled, and Pop Mart’s stock has retreated some 40% from its August peak. Powered by Labubu, Pop Mart’s revenue and net income in 2025 surged 185% and 309%, respectively.

But shares fell over 22% after the earnings release Wednesday as investors weighed whether the company can keep up the momentum beyond the initial hype.

CEO Wang Ning sought to reassure the market during the earnings call, saying, “Pop Mart has more than just Labubu” — and likening the expectations for the company to a “rookie racing driver suddenly thrown onto an F1 circuit.”

No one knows how long a character will stay popular, Si said. But Pop Mart is clear on how one fades: when you stop investing in it.

“We learned this from Disney. They have a very simple truth: continuous investment,” the 38-year-old executive told CNBC this month. “When you keep making the right investments, the [intellectual property] has a chance to keep going.”

For Pop Mart, that means going global and building worlds around its characters: films, theme parks, fashion tie-ups. The motive is not vanity projects, but commercial bets designed to keep its products like Labubu embedded in people’s lives.

“Of course, we hope that Labubu can also last 80, 90, or 100 years,” Si said, noting Mickey Mouse is nearly a century old. “But this road is very long.”

Pop Mart first launched Labubu as part of a blind-box collection in 2019 after licensing the character from Hong Kong-Dutch artist Kasing Lung, who created it for a picture-book series several years earlier. For the plush products that became wildly popular, Pop Mart’s team spent about two years developing and prototyping designs.

This painstaking process was not the exception. Pop Mart scours the world for artists each year, Si said, but most don’t make the cut. Of the tiny fraction who sign with the company, they go through a long incubation process, including internal competition, before the company decides where to concentrate its resources.

The shortlist is deliberately kept small. “We aim to help four, five, maybe six IPs truly grow world-class,” Si said, drawing from Disney’s playbook where a handful of characters generate…