「How did Pop Mart turn blind boxes into a money printing machine?」

Did you think Pop Mart is just selling blind boxes?

Wrong. It’s more like a trendy version of a mix between “Pinduoduo” and “LV”: capturing emotions, squeezing addiction, and mass-hatching IPs, a set of combined tactics that clean out young people's wallets.

In the past three years, it has sold nearly 1 billion with just one Molly and opened stores in Singapore, South Korea, Bangkok... Today, let's talk about the business logic behind Pop Mart's trendy toy money printing machine.

1. Pop Mart is not a toy company; it’s a “trendy version of Chanel”

Trendy toys aren’t cheap, but the market for inexpensive “luxury psychological satisfaction” is even bigger.

What Pop Mart sells is a “light luxury sense of identity.”

It precisely targets the new middle class born after 1995: not buying LV, but wanting personality, emotions, and easy addiction.

So Pop Mart packages blind boxes as “a sense of ritual + a sense of surprise + a collecting system.”

2. The blind box mechanism is a delicately designed “dopamine economics.”

Blind boxes = gambling: 10+1 hidden design, stimulating users to place orders.

Precisely controlling the hidden ratio (for example, 1:144) enhances the addiction mechanism.

Players shift from “buying toys” to “drawing scarce resources” → collecting.

The official tacitly allows circulation in the secondary market, causing hidden prices to soar.

3. It is an “IP assembly line company,” not a content company.

Pop Mart signs artists, hatches IPs, and uses data to regulate production.

Every hit product can be disassembled into: character personality setting + rapid mass production + hype release.

Frequent updates and co-releases form an IP universe: Molly, Dimoo, Skullpanda, etc., each fulfilling their roles.

Fans gradually fall into a consumption loop in the “complete IP universe.”

4. Membership system + store strategy, creating a “trendy religion scene.”

Multi-level membership systems induce users to “accumulate points, level up.”

Stores aren’t just selling goods; they are photo spots + check-in tasks + hidden showcases.

Transforming users from online buyers → offline believers.

Little Red Book promotion + check-in topics + co-branded peripherals = establishing a sense of consumption ritual.

Pop Mart's real moat is not a single hit IP, but:

A systematic approach that can quickly hatch IPs, create addiction, and manipulate emotions.

When we discuss “how to build a brand,” Pop Mart is already using trendy toys to create a “young people's attention harvesting machine.”