VESSEL GLOBAL CAPITAL / GLOBAL CAPITAL INSIGHTSISSUE 03 · JULY 2026

CONSUMER IP · CHINA → WORLD

When a character becomes global infrastructure.

POP MARTHKEX: 9992

Pop Mart’s 2025 surge shows what happens when intellectual property, product cadence, retail theater and digital distribution reinforce one another across borders.

A founder can discover a hit. The harder task is building an organization that can turn cultural attention into a durable portfolio.

Pop Mart began as a retailer and evolved into an integrated intellectual-property platform. The transformation matters: a retailer earns a margin on products; an IP operator can develop characters, shape product scarcity, control distribution, create experiences and expand the same emotional asset across categories and markets.

In 2025, the model reached an extraordinary scale inflection. Revenue nearly tripled, profit grew even faster, and the Americas became a material region. LABUBU and THE MONSTERS supplied the cultural spark, but the investment question is whether operating systems—not one phenomenon—can reproduce the outcome.

Pop Mart’s 2025 surge shows what happens when intellectual property, product cadence, retail theater and digital distribution reinforce one another across borders.

02 / THE MACRO TREND

Chinese consumer brands are shifting from exporting products to exporting culture.

Global distribution has compressed the distance between local fandom and worldwide demand. TikTok, direct apps, landmark stores and collectible scarcity can turn an IP event into simultaneous global commerce. The opportunity is enormous; so is the risk of concentration, overproduction and fashion-cycle reversal.

POP MART, IN PLAIN ENGLISH

Pop Mart finds and develops character IP, turns it into collectible products and experiences, then distributes it through stores, roboshops, apps, marketplaces and wholesale channels.

Discover

Partner with artists and identify characters with emotional resonance.

Develop

Create product series, stories, formats and collaborations.

Distribute

Control stores, digital channels, roboshops and wholesale.

Extend

Build experiences, new categories and regional fan communities.

SCALE + FINANCIAL PROOF

Most recent fiscal year · Company-reported

2025 REVENUE

RMB37.1bn+184.7% year over year

PROFIT

RMB13.0bn+293.3% year over year

AMERICAS REVENUE

RMB6.8bn+748.4% year over year

AMERICAS STORES

64up from 22 in 2024

Is this a one-character supercycle—or evidence of a repeatable global IP operating system?

WHAT IS WORKING

Revenue and profit accelerated sharply in 2025.
Overseas operations reached RMB16.3bn of revenue.
Americas online revenue grew more than tenfold.
Physical and digital channels expanded together.

WHAT NEEDS PROOF

THE MONSTERS and LABUBU concentration must be monitored.
Scarcity requires disciplined inventory and release management.
Rapid international growth adds execution and localization complexity.
Investors need portfolio-level evidence of repeatable IP creation.

THE DATA, VISUALIZED

The operating evidence behind the thesis.

Comparable periods, explicit units and primary-source definitions. Bar length shows magnitude; labels provide exact values.

REVENUE · RMB BN

A step-change in consumer demand

Company revenue by fiscal year; RMB billions.

2024RMB13.0bn

2025RMB37.1bn

READ-THROUGHRevenue increased 184.7% in 2025. The magnitude changes the management challenge from finding demand to allocating inventory, retail capacity and brand attention without diluting scarcity.

Source: Pop Mart 2025 annual results

REGIONAL REVENUE · RMB BN

Global growth is no longer a footnote

2025 revenue by reporting geography; RMB billions.

MainlandRMB20.9bn

APACRMB8.0bn

AmericasRMB6.8bn

EuropeRMB1.5bn

READ-THROUGHMainland China remained the largest market, while Asia-Pacific, the Americas and Europe together contributed roughly 44% of revenue. The Americas alone reached RMB6.8 billion.

Source: Pop Mart 2025 annual results

06 / LONG-FORM ANALYSIS

What the numbers change—and what they still cannot prove.

A hit character creates attention. A portfolio system creates duration.

LABUBU’s global visibility gave Pop Mart an extraordinary demand catalyst, but public investors must separate the strength of the character from the repeatability of the company’s operating system. The durable asset is the process that finds artists, structures rights, tests product concepts, sequences releases and decides when an IP is ready for a new format or geography.

Portfolio disclosure should therefore show more than rankings. Investors need contribution by major IP family, growth from older cohorts, the share generated by proprietary versus licensed properties and evidence that emerging characters can graduate into meaningful revenue. Concentration is not automatically a weakness; it becomes a risk when the organization cannot explain how the next layer of the portfolio is being built.

FOUNDER TAKEAWAYMeasure the pipeline from artist discovery to repeatable IP—not only the sales of the current hero.

The same scarcity that powers demand can be damaged by operational success.

Collectibles work because consumers perceive discovery, identity and limited access. A company facing explosive demand can respond by expanding supply, opening more channels and accelerating launches. Those actions increase near-term revenue but can weaken the emotional contract if availability becomes ordinary or quality slips.

The operating indicators are inventory turns, sell-through by release, markdowns, resale-price behavior, production lead times and cancellation rates. Together they reveal whether scale is meeting demand intelligently or simply flooding it. Management should frame inventory discipline as brand governance: a controlled system that balances accessibility with the surprise and scarcity that make the category distinctive.

FOUNDER TAKEAWAYTreat inventory planning as protection of the intangible asset, not just a working-capital exercise.

Stores and apps are both sales channels and market-sensing infrastructure.

Pop Mart’s stores create theater, product discovery and community; its digital channels provide speed, reach and direct customer data. Roboshops add convenient distribution with a different labor and real-estate profile. The strategic advantage comes from orchestrating the channels rather than evaluating each in isolation.

A useful public scorecard would pair store count with same-store sales, sales per square meter, payback and membership engagement. Digital reporting should connect active buyers, purchase frequency and acquisition cost. When those datasets inform release calendars and local assortments, the distribution network becomes a learning loop that can compound the value of the IP portfolio.

FOUNDER TAKEAWAYExplain how channel data changes product and allocation decisions, not merely how many outlets were added.

Global demand does not eliminate the need for local operating judgment.

The 2025 regional data show that overseas operations have become material. That creates decisions about store formats, market-specific collaborations, local creators, price architecture and the balance between direct retail and wholesale. A viral social signal may be global, while lease economics, consumer expectations and regulatory requirements remain local.

Regional teams need authority to adapt without fragmenting the brand. Investors should see common global controls—quality, rights management, product safety and core visual identity—alongside explicit local choices. The strongest expansion model is not identical execution everywhere; it is a repeatable framework for deciding what must remain consistent and what should change.

FOUNDER TAKEAWAYLocalize the operating playbook while preserving the IP’s globally recognizable core.

The next phase requires proving that 2025 was an inflection, not an endpoint.

Exceptional growth creates a difficult comparison base. If management communicates only the percentage increase, normalizing growth may look like deterioration even while the business remains healthy. The narrative should move toward absolute revenue, profit conversion, cohort durability, inventory quality and returns on new stores and experiences.

That reporting architecture also protects strategic flexibility. When investors understand the economics of mature IP, emerging IP, stores and digital channels, the company can invest through cycles without every expense being interpreted as a loss of control. The objective is to make the portfolio’s durability legible before the current cultural moment inevitably changes.

FOUNDER TAKEAWAYMove investor attention from the viral moment to the economics and governance of the platform behind it.

07 / TRANSACTION BREAKDOWN

The Hong Kong listing funded a platform, not only a store rollout.

Pop Mart listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange in December 2020. It issued 135.7 million new shares at HK$38.50 and reported approximately HK$5.03 billion of net IPO proceeds before the over-allotment, creating capital for consumer reach, IP development and operating infrastructure.

CAPITAL / SECURITIES135.7m shares

⇄

ISSUER / INVESTORSHK$38.50

HONG KONG MAIN BOARD · STOCK CODE 9992

08 / SIGNATURE IR ANALYSIS

The messages management should keep proving.

Disclose IP concentration

Show revenue contribution and repeat purchase behavior across major character families.

Explain cohort durability

Separate launch spikes from sustained demand by region, channel and customer cohort.

Protect scarcity economics

Connect inventory turns, markdowns and production cadence to brand health.

Make global economics visible

Report store productivity, digital acquisition and contribution by major region.

A global brand is not the same thing as a globally viral product.

The distinction lies in systems: a portfolio process for artists and characters, disciplined product calendars, owned consumer relationships, regional operating talent and a capital-allocation framework that resists chasing every spike in demand.

For founders, Pop Mart’s rise is a lesson in building around an intangible asset. Cultural relevance may be unpredictable, but the organization that discovers, tests, distributes and measures it can be designed deliberately.

01Build a portfolio before the hero IP peaks.
02Own the customer relationship across physical and digital channels.
03Report cultural momentum through operating evidence, not adjectives.

ABOUT VESSEL GLOBAL CAPITAL

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Guojian ChenChief SPAC Officer

PRIMARY SOURCES

Source notes

IMPORTANT NOTICE

This publication is for informational and educational purposes only and does not constitute investment, legal, accounting or tax advice, an offer to sell, or a solicitation to buy any security. Vessel Global Capital expresses no securities recommendation or price target. Public information is believed reliable but has not been independently verified. Readers should conduct their own diligence and consult appropriate advisers.

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