Pop Mart's profit is expected to increase by 350% in the first half of the year, driven by the Labub craze

Chinese trendy toy manufacturer Pop Mart expects that driven by the global popularity of Labubu series dolls, the group's profit for the first half of the year ending at the end of June will surge by at least 350%, and revenue will also increase by at least 200%.

Pop Mart announced on Tuesday (July 15th) that in addition to a significant increase in brand awareness, cost optimization and expense control have also contributed to the improvement of the group's profit performance.

Labubu is a monster character created by Hong Kong artist Long Jiasheng. Its unique shape is highly sought after by collectors. After celebrities such as Rihanna and BLACKPINK member Lisa publicly showed up with Labubu, it sparked a wave of enthusiastic support from their fans. In order to get their favorite styles, many fans are willing to queue up for a long time and even pay a premium to purchase them.

In June this year, a life-sized, unique mint green Labubu doll was sold in Beijing at a sky-high price of 1.08 million RMB.

As the popularity of this tooked-toothed monster image has soared, Pop Mart's Hong Kong shares have risen by more than 180% so far this year and have skyrocketed by 588% over the past year, pushing the company's market value to exceed 40 billion US dollars (about 51.2 billion Singapore dollars).

The international popularity of Labubu has also made Pop Mart one of the few Chinese retail brands that have successfully entered the Western market.

The company's gross profit margin last year was as high as nearly 67%, far exceeding the 45% of the consumer goods retailer Miniso and the approximately 20% of the gross profit margins of Xiaomi and the electric vehicle manufacturer BYD.