Pop Mart's collectible sales slump as Labuabi craze fades

Pop Mart, the Beijing-based collectible toy company behind the wildly popular Labubu character, has disclosed a sharp contraction in quarterly sales, signaling a cooling in demand for its designer figurines that once captured consumer enthusiasm across multiple markets.

The company's revenue in China, its core market, declined between 25 and 30 percent during the period, while sales from the Americas experienced a far steeper downturn, falling between 70 and 75 percent. The dual-market weakness underscores the challenges facing Pop Mart as it confronts shifting consumer preferences and market saturation following years of explosive growth fueled by viral collecting trends.

Pop Mart's Labuab—a blind-box collectible that became a status symbol among collectors and casual buyers alike—had driven the company's meteoric rise since its introduction. The collectible model relies on mystery packaging and limited editions to drive repeat purchases and secondary market sales. The recent performance suggests that initial enthusiasm for the product category has significantly diminished.

The company's struggle reflects broader headwinds in the collectible market, where novelty-driven demand can prove volatile. Pop Mart's international expansion, particularly in Western markets, appears to have faced particular difficulty as the collectible trend that once seemed poised for sustained growth has lost momentum.

The results mark a reversal of fortune for Pop Mart, which had leveraged its collectible model to establish a global brand presence and attract substantial investor interest in recent years.