Published : 2022-05-05
Pop Mart has triggered a worldwide "blind box fever". Driven by founder Wang Ning's acute innovative flair, the company has become the icon of China's art toy scene in just over a decade.
What is the story of Wang Ning, and how did he craft the blind box empire that has captivated the world?
Pop Mart's inspiration came from HK's "LOG-ON"
Wang Ning (王寧) came from an ordinary background, and most of his childhood and after-school time was spent in his parents' small shop. But Wang Ning saw all sorts of customers, and unknowingly developed a strong interest in business, which also cultivated his business acumen.
Following the path of retail, in early 2008, Wang discovered an emerging business format, the "cubicle shops", which gathered all kinds of creative products and very easily attracted foot traffic.
However, the low barrier to entry for such shops makes competition inevitable. This mutual slaughter eventually leads to a dead end where nobody makes any money.
Cubicle shops were Wang Ning's starting point, but due to the rental model, it was difficult to control the quality of the merchandise, coupled with issues like the wide variety of products and low gross margins.
Wang Ning and his team visited many cities for market research, and finally in Hong Kong, they came across LOG-ON. It displayed and sold trendy products in a supermarket-style format and was very successful.
In November 2010, the first Pop Mart store officially opened in the EC Mall Shopping Centre in Zhongguancun, Beijing.
Subsequently, from 2012 to 2015, Pop Mart rose rapidly in the youth market, growing from a start-up team of a few people into a large-scale, standardised enterprise, and the management efficiency of its stores became increasingly higher.
Wang Ning found a "cash cow" in Hong Kong
Pop Mart's real success came when Wang Ning found the renowned Hong Kong designer, Kenny Wong (王信明).
On 9 January 2016, Wang Ning posted on Weibo asking his fans, "Besides collecting Sonny Angel, what else do you all like to collect?". The result was that more than half of the people mentioned the Molly doll.
Four days later, Wang and his team appeared at the studio of renowned Hong Kong designer Kenny Wong.
"It was like discovering Jay Chou singing in a restaurant. A whole room full of first-class design works that had not been commercialised."
In 2016, Wang Ning signed an exclusive licensing agreement with Kenny Wong, officially bringing the blind box trend to the Chinese Mainland. On the first day the Molly doll blind boxes were launched on the Tmall flagship store, they sold out in just four seconds.
Wang Ning went a step further, cancelling all the company's other business operations.
"What required even greater courage was that we cut most of our SKUs (Stock Keeping Units) and focused only on Molly. I think this was the biggest bet we made at the time. At that time, Pop Mart was still a trendy retail store with many SKUs, including bags, digital products, home goods, and so on. At that point, we didn't know what the future held for Molly, but we were still very determined to cut all other categories except for designer toys."
Pop Mart completely transformed from a trendy variety shop into a retailer operating in trendy toys and even an IP brand operator, igniting a brand new market.
Wang Ning initially just wanted to open a Japanese-style variety shop, later deciding to devote himself fully to trendy toys, until he discovered Molly, eventually building his own blind box empire.
