On April 24, Pop Mart officially unveiled its first home appliance product—the THE MONSTERS Lifestyle Series Cooler (LABUBU-themed refrigerator), available in Home and House of the Monsters versions, uniformly priced at 5,999 yuan, with a global limited release of 999 units scheduled for 10 PM on April 30. Pre-sale reservations exceeded 3,000. The author found on second-hand platforms that, before the release, the LABUBU refrigerator had already appeared at a price of 92,300 yuan, a premium of about 15 times. Coincidentally, also on April 30, Pop Mart's urban theme park, POP LAND, located in Beijing's Chaoyang Park, welcomed a major Phase 1.5 upgrade since its opening, adding three new themed areas and five large-scale amusement rides, including a drop tower and a pirate ship for the first time, officially expanding its audience from children to adults. The new themed areas and multiple large-scale rides, including "Flying LABUBU," officially opened to the public. Looking at the timeline, just a month earlier, in March 2026, Pop Mart and Sony Pictures officially announced that Paul King, director of the "Paddington" series, would direct a live-action/CGI animated film for Labubu. Refrigerator, theme park, Hollywood movie. When these three key milestones are placed on the same timeline, a classic IP commercialization trajectory gradually emerges: Starting with toys → penetrating daily life scenes through home appliances/FMCG → creating offline immersive spaces with theme parks → ultimately achieving global IP licensing and cultural export. Under this logic, Sanrio (parent company of Hello Kitty) once used this playbook to become a global phenomenon, from selling small coin purses with illustrations to global licensing and opening Sanrio Puroland. Now, Pop Mart, in the midst of its global expansion surge, seems to be precisely replicating this playbook. This path took a Japanese company sixty years. Its name is Sanrio, and its most famous IP is Hello Kitty. But is this merely a simple case of "copying homework"? When we delve into the underlying supply chain logic, C-end consumer feedback, and the global retail competitive landscape, we find that Pop Mart is indeed following Sanrio's old path, but driving a new car for the digital age. Why would Pop Mart sell a 5,999-yuan refrigerator? From the traditional B2B distribution logic of FMCG or home appliances, this seems like a risky move. In the red ocean market dominated by traditional home appliance giants like Midea and Haier, a trendy toy brand crossing over into large white goods has no natural advantage in supply chain costs and after-sales service. But switching to C-end-driven decision logic, everything makes sense. 1. Breaking the limits of display cabinets, penetrating high-frequency life scenes The essence of trendy toy blind boxes is emotional consumption, but their physical nature means they can only sit quietly on a young person's desk or in a display cabinet. This interaction is low-frequency. The key to Sanrio's early success in making Hello Kitty a global top-tier IP was not limiting the IP to plush toys, but quickly printing it on toasters, clothing, stationery, and even All Nippon Airways aircraft. Pop Mart's launch of the LABUBU refrigerator is not primarily aimed at capturing home appliance market share, but rather at completing the IP's transformation from a "desk ornament" to a "life companion." As a core household appliance used frequently, the refrigerator provides consumers with continuous, high-density emotional value feedback. This is an inevitable leap in the maturation of an IP's lifecycle—no longer relying solely on the "surprise" of blind boxes to drive repurchase, but on a deep-rooted "companionship" to lock in consumer mindshare. 2. Testing C-end high-ticket acceptance, guiding supply chain customization in reverse In retail, it is often the most cutting-edge consumer feedback that drives brand evolution. The 5,999-yuan price tag is essentially a stress test of core fans' purchasing power and the IP's premium capability. Traditional consumer goods distribution often starts with a product and then pushes inventory to distributors; Pop Mart's limited-edition appliance, however, is more of a reverse supply chain experiment based on data from its massive membership system (with over 70 million registered members in mainland China alone). Once this model proves viable, the future of "IP + category operation" around daily life holds limitless imagination. What path did Sanrio take? To understand what Pop Mart is doing now, one must first clearly see the path Sanrio has taken. 1960: A silk company embarks on character merchandise with patterned sandals Sanrio's starting point was in 1960, when Shintaro Tsuji opened "Yamanashi Silk Center" in Tokyo with one million yen, initially selling silk and sundries. The company's turning point came from a pair of rubber sandals—Tsuji discovered that sandals with patterned designs sold much better than plain ones. He concluded that cute patterns themselves are part of a product's value. He then began to focus on product designs, embarking on the character merchandise route. In 1962, the company launched its first original character, "Strawberry," and simultaneously started its gift sales business. In 1971, the first "Gift Gate" directly operated specialty store opened in Shinjuku, Tokyo. In 1973, the company was officially renamed "Sanrio," with headquarters moved to Tokyo, and that same year completed a brand upgrade to enter the international market. This was the foundation Sanrio built over 13 years: its own character system, direct retail channels, and a clear brand philosophy—"Share a small gift, receive a big smile." 1974: Hello Kitty is born, and overseas expansion and licensing begin simultaneously In 1974, designer Yuko Shimizu created Hello Kitty, initially printed on coin purses, then expanding to stationery, gifts, and daily necessities, quickly becoming popular among Japanese schoolgirls. That same year, Sanrio opened its first Gift Gate store in California, USA, and established its American subsidiary, Sanrio Inc., officially starting overseas expansion. In 1975, the first Sanrio animated film was released, and the company began venturing into film and television content. In 1976, the original character licensing business officially began—one of the most critical commercial transformations in Sanrio's history. From selling only its own products to licensing IP to others, Sanrio's business model began moving toward a platform approach. By the 1970s, Sanrio had essentially built four major business segments: "brand direct sales," "overseas markets," "content production," and "character licensing." Within just five or six years of Hello Kitty's birth, the prototype of the entire business model had taken shape. 1980: IP enters home appliances, expansion into Europe In 1980, the third-generation Hello Kitty designer, Yuko Yamaguchi, took office and launched Kitty-themed telephones, digital watches, and other electronic products, leading to a significant increase in sales. This was the first time Sanrio extended its IP into the home appliance category—46 years earlier than Pop Mart's Labubu refrigerator. During the same period, Sanrio officially expanded its business to Europe and began operating the "Sanrio Theater." In 1984, it successfully listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange. Starting in 1986, Sanrio began holding annual "Character Popularity Elections," where fans voted to determine character rankings. This mechanism continues to this day, essentially serving as an operational tool to continuously activate fan emotional investment. Hello Kitty won 12 consecutive championships from 1998 to 2009. In 1988, construction began on Sanrio Puroland in Tama, Tokyo. 1990: Theme park opens, revenue peaks, first trough hits In December 1990, Sanrio Puroland officially opened in Tama, Tokyo, an indoor theme park themed around Hello Kitty, My Melody, and other characters. However, it suffered losses for the first three years due to management chaos and a temporary decline in the Hello Kitty craze. In the late 1990s, riding the Hello Kitty wave among high school girls and young office workers, Sanrio's revenue reached a historical peak of over 150 billion yen. During this period, Sanrio opened over 200 directly operated stores nationwide, with thousands of franchise and retail outlets, and at one point held nearly 80% market share in the gift and sundry market. But the good times didn't last; over-expansion led to a crisis—high inventory and personnel costs from numerous direct stores, coupled with investments in derivative financial products, coincided with the burst of Japan's economic bubble, causing negative revenue growth and a stock price drop to a historic low of 600 yen. From 1992 to 2013, Sanrio Puroland's performance remained sluggish for 21 consecutive years. This trough period is key background for understanding why Sanrio has survived so long. It experienced real crises and was forced to undergo structural reforms. 2008: Shift from selling goods to licensing, establishing a global licensing system In 2008, Haruo Hatoyama, an MBA graduate from Harvard Business School, joined Sanrio and led a major reform of its overseas strategy. The core shift was "from tangible to intangible": reducing direct sales of its own products and shifting to licensing IP to partners; simultaneously promoting licensing localization, gradually transferring sales, planning, and design authority from Japan's headquarters to regional offices, and relaxing design usage standards to increase partner freedom. In 2012, Sanrio had 759 licensing partners in Europe and 597 in North and South America. After shifting from product sales to licensing, Sanrio's profit margins improved significantly. Although overall revenue decreased, net profit grew rapidly, and the company never recorded a loss again. This reform was the key turning point in Sanrio truly establishing its global licensing system. 2014: Theme park V-shaped rebound: from children to adults In 2014, Aya Komaki became the new director of Puroland and began hosting adult-oriented events—all-night clubs, Halloween haunted houses, and inviting celebrities and singers to perform. The park's audience expanded from mainly children to young adults, and it began emphasizing social media marketing, turning the park into an Instagram-worthy spot. In 2016, visitor numbers hit a record high since opening, reaching 1.8 million; in 2017, it broke the record again, reaching 1.98 million. Post-2021: Multi-character matrix rises, Hello Kitty dependency declines Sanrio has reduced its reliance on Hello Kitty by expanding its IP matrix; Hello Kitty's revenue contribution has dropped from its peak to about 30%, with characters like Cinnamoroll, Kuromi, and My Melody each carrying their own traffic. In the Chinese market, Kuromi's popularity has risen rapidly in recent years, surpassing Hello Kitty to become Sanrio's largest IP in China. 2024: Hello Kitty's 50th anniversary, market cap exceeds 1 trillion yen In fiscal 2024 (Hello Kitty's 50th anniversary), operating profit exceeded 27 billion yen, a record high, surpassing the previous record of 21.5 billion yen in fiscal 2014. In October 2024, Sanrio's total market capitalization exceeded 1 trillion yen, setting a new record high for its stock price since listing. Current revenue structure Currently, Sanrio's overseas revenue accounts for about 40% of total revenue; domestically in Japan, licensing revenue accounts for 10% to 13%, product sales revenue 20% to 30%, theme park revenue about 7% to 10%, and other revenue 11% to 16%. It owns over 500 character images, and Hello Kitty-related products cover more than 130 countries and regions. Distilling this path, the main line is clear: starting with gift sundries → creating original characters → expanding direct channels → overseas subsidiaries for global expansion → launching licensing business → extending IP into home appliances → opening theme parks → facing a trough → shifting from selling goods to licensing → multi-character matrix → mature global licensing system. Between each step lies a gap of ten years or more. Is Pop Mart following the same path? With Sanrio's path laid out, comparing it to Pop Mart's recent moves reveals a strong parallel. How Labubu went from Thailand to global fame Let's set the background. Labubu was designed by artist Kasing Lung, and the character has existed since 2015, set against the backdrop of Nordic forest elves, with nine sharp teeth, long ears, and a furry body. Initially, market response was lukewarm. In 2019, Pop Mart took over operations, and it wasn't until 2022, with the launch of the first generation of vinyl plush figures, that things began to pick up. The real explosion came in 2024. BLACKPINK member Lisa posted Labubu on social media for three consecutive days, igniting the Southeast Asian market. Pop Mart subsequently opened its first Labubu IP-themed store in Bangkok, with first-day sales exceeding 10 million yuan, setting a record for overseas stores. The buzz then spread to Europe and the US, with Rihanna, David Beckham, and Dua Lipa posting Labubu on social media. In London, there was even a fight among scalpers, forcing Pop Mart to suspend Labubu sales in the UK. In 2025, the Pop Mart app briefly topped the US App Store shopping chart, and US stores saw consumers queuing overnight. Financial reports illustrate the scale of this overseas explosion. For the full year 2025, Pop Mart's revenue was 37.12 billion yuan, up 184.7% year-on-year; adjusted net profit was 13.08 billion yuan, up 284.5%. Among this, revenue from the THE MONSTERS series, which includes Labubu, reached 14.16 billion yuan, up 365.7%, becoming the first trendy toy IP to exceed 10 billion yuan. Overseas revenue totaled 16.27 billion yuan, up 291.9%, with its share of total revenue rising from 31.8% in 2024 to 43.8%. By region, the Americas market grew 748.4% year-on-year, and Europe and other regions grew 506.3%, with all four global regions achieving triple-digit growth. Against this backdrop, Pop Mart has been intensively pushing a series of moves that go beyond "selling toys." Refrigerator: The first test of IP entering life scenes The Labubu refrigerator, priced at 5,999 yuan and limited to 999 units, clearly targets not everyday appliance consumers but core fans with purchasing power. This logic mirrors Sanrio's launch of the Kitty-themed telephone in 1980—using scarcity and buzz to test a category and see where fans' boundaries lie. Sanrio has walked this path, and Hello Kitty home appliances are now relatively common mass-market products in Japan, with categories extending to rice cookers, washing machines, and other daily appliances. Pop Mart is still at the first step, testing with limited editions. The underlying logic is the same: a refrigerator opened a dozen times a day provides a "presence" that a toy hanging on a handbag cannot. The more IP enters life scenes, the deeper the emotional connection with consumers, and the stronger the resistance to churn. Theme park: The physical anchor of the IP ecosystem Pop Mart's urban theme park opened in September 2023 in Beijing's Chaoyang Park, covering about 40,000 square meters. It follows the model of light theme parks centered on IP experiences, like Japan's Ghibli Museum and Shiroi Koibito Park, rather than Disney or Universal Studios. In 2024, the park achieved profitability. In 2025, even with half the park closed for upgrades, visitor traffic still grew over 70% year-on-year, with non-parent-child families accounting for 59% of visitors, non-local visitors 58%, and it ranked sixth among popular Beijing inbound tourism attractions. This Phase 1.5 upgrade, introducing large rides like drop towers and pirate ships for the first time, addresses a recurring issue since opening: insufficient content for adult visitors, with facilities leaning toward children. This adjustment direction is almost identical to Sanrio Puroland's 2014 reform—after Komaki took over, she repositioned the park from a "children's playground" to an "IP experience destination for adults," leading to a V-shaped rebound in visitor numbers. The value of the theme park to Pop Mart is the same as it is to Sanrio: the IP gains a physical anchor, fans transform from online consumers to offline experiencers, and the depth of emotional bonding increases. In 2025, the urban park held 40 "celebrity friend outing special events," and the viral "Labubu Song" was originally composed as background music for a sculpture in the park. According to Pop Mart's disclosed plans, construction on Phase 2 of the urban park will begin in 2027, adding new scenes themed around SKULLPANDA and the Star Man. Movie: Filling in the story for the IP In March 2026, Pop Mart and Sony Pictures officially announced that Paul King, director of the "Paddington" series, would direct a live-action animated film for Labubu, with THE MONSTERS creator Kasing Lung participating as executive producer to ensure the IP's soul is preserved during adaptation. This choice has an important background: Labubu, so far, has basically no complete narrative. It rose to fame through visual symbols and emotional spread on social media. This kind of fame comes quickly but is unstable—when the novelty fades, why should consumers continue to pay attention? It's worth noting that this differs from Sanrio's starting point. Sanrio's IPs, including Hello Kitty, were never story-driven from the beginning; they relied on emotional design and scene placement to build long-term connections, with the "blank space" in the IP design allowing consumers to project their own emotions. Pop Mart's current approach is to supplement the IP with story content after it has already become popular—the order is different, but the ultimate goal is the same: to root the IP in consumers' hearts, not just maintain buzz through traffic. Putting Sanrio's route and Pop Mart's current actions side by side:

  • Sanrio started its gift business in 1962; Pop Mart was founded in 2010 selling blind boxes.
  • Sanrio launched Hello Kitty in 1974 and immediately began overseas expansion; Pop Mart began large-scale overseas expansion with Labubu starting in 2024.
  • Sanrio started licensing in 1976; Pop Mart is still primarily self-operated, with licensing in its infancy.
  • Sanrio extended IP into home appliances in 1980; Pop Mart launched the Labubu refrigerator in 2026.
  • Sanrio opened its theme park in 1990; Pop Mart opened its urban park in 2023.
  • Sanrio began film and TV content in 1975; Pop Mart announced a co-produced film with Sony in 2026. At every node, Sanrio is decades ahead of Pop Mart. But the direction is the same.

Where is the most critical gap between the two?

Same direction does not mean same results. Sanrio took sixty years to get where it is today, with a stock price crash to 600 yen, a 21-year slump at its theme park, a stock price halving due to the unexpected death of a key heir, and net profit nearly zero during the pandemic years. Pop Mart is benchmarking against Sanrio's current results, not the path it took. There are several gaps worth serious consideration. Gap 1: Single-IP dependency is the biggest structural risk now What the capital market most appreciates about Sanrio today is that it does not rely on any single IP. Hello Kitty's revenue contribution has dropped from its peak to about 30%, with Cinnamoroll, Kuromi, My Melody, and Pochacco each independently supporting a market segment. In China, Kuromi has even surpassed Hello Kitty to become the top IP. This multi-character matrix is an anti-risk structure that Sanrio built over decades of accumulation and multiple crises. Pop Mart's current state is the opposite. The 2025 annual report shows that the THE MONSTERS series, which includes Labubu, generated revenue of 14.16 billion yuan, accounting for 38.1% of total revenue, up from just 23% in 2024—in one year, the concentration of a single IP has increased, not decreased. On the day the report was released, Pop Mart's Hong Kong-listed shares fell more than 15% intraday, with market value evaporating about 65.5 billion Hong Kong dollars in a single day. The market's core concern lies here. The capital market's judgment is straightforward: Sanrio's profit is only about one-seventh of Pop Mart's, but its price-to-earnings ratio is nearly three times higher. This means Sanrio's performance is considered more sustainable than Pop Mart's. Pop Mart itself is aware of this issue and is accelerating the launch of new IPs, with over 350 global collaborating artists and a significant increase in IP releases in 2025. But the market response to new IPs has not been optimistic: Supertutu and "Merodi After School," launched after the Year of the Horse Spring Festival, received lukewarm market reactions; a Goldman Sachs report noted that Supertutu's debut series sold only over 500 units on Tmall. There is a considerable gap between "rapid incubation" and "IP truly landing." Gap 2: The licensing system has not yet been established The most important moat in Sanrio's current business model is its global licensing system. Hello Kitty-related products cover more than 130 countries and regions, with licensed categories extending from clothing and food to finance, education, and gaming. Domestic licensing revenue in Japan accounts for 10% to 13% of total revenue year after year. This system started in 1976, underwent a major reform in 2008, and took nearly fifty years to reach its current scale. Pop Mart's current overseas layout relies mainly on self-operated stores and online channels—as of the end of 2025, it operates 630 stores globally across 20 countries. Self-operation allows for quality and image control, which is a reasonable choice for the early stage of overseas expansion. However, self-operation has high marginal costs and limited expansion speed. The true maximization of IP globalization monetization efficiency comes from licensing, and Pop Mart is still in its infancy in this area. Gap 3: The emotional depth of the IP Hello Kitty has no mouth and no complete story, yet for fifty years, a large number of consumers have been willing to pay for it. The reason is that Sanrio established clear emotional value from the start: gifts convey true feelings, using small and refined products to maintain emotional connections between people. This philosophy permeates every detail of product selection, scene design, and park operations, making Hello Kitty not just a pattern but an emotional infrastructure. Labubu's explosion relies on Lisa's social media promotion, the news effect of overseas queues, and the scarcity created by limited editions. These are all real traffic drivers, but they share a common characteristic: novelty fades. Pop Mart founder Wang Ning himself admitted at the earnings call that the high growth in 2025 felt like being pushed onto an F1 track, and the company wasn't actually ready; in 2026, it needs to "enter the pit stop, refuel, and change tires." The logic behind this statement is consistent with Sanrio's reluctance to rapidly expand through heavy advertising—excessive growth means an influx of trend-following consumers, and also a greater correction risk when the heat fades. Some signals are already emerging. After the Labubu 4.0 series was released, some regular versions fell below official retail prices on the second-hand market; "Pop Mart 50% off clearance" has repeatedly trended on social media; Molly's full-year revenue was 2.9 billion yuan, below the market consensus of 4.6 billion yuan; CRYBABY also missed expectations. These signals point to the same question: when trend-following consumers outside the core fan base retreat, where is the true demand floor? Chinese consumer brands going overseas have mostly relied on cost advantages for rough cross-border e-commerce distribution (selling goods logic). But Pop Mart is taking a more difficult but more long-term path of "brand globalization." To maintain popularity in dozens of countries with different cultural backgrounds, the traditional one-way distribution model has become ineffective. Facing a complex cross-border retail network built by TikTok Shop, brand independent sites, and offline direct stores, Pop Mart is shifting its overseas focus from simply "selling toys" to efficient "supply chain services" and refined "category operations." The launch of the refrigerator and the operational experience of the theme park are essentially about reserving a richer SKU library and a more advanced business model for its overseas business. Today, it can sell LABUBU refrigerators domestically; tomorrow, through an optimized global supply chain, it can distribute IP lifestyle home products that meet local certification standards to flagship stores in North America.

Final Thoughts

Pop Mart is heading in a direction highly aligned with Sanrio—toys, home appliance extensions, theme parks, film and TV content, global licensing—each node is advancing in order. But Sanrio took sixty years to get where it is today, with nearly twenty of those years spent in troughs and reforms. It truly established a mature global licensing system only after the 2008 reform, more than thirty years after Hello Kitty's birth. Pop Mart is now in the second year of Labubu's explosion. Placing a refrigerator and a theme park upgrade at this point in time puts it closer to Sanrio's position in the early 1980s—just finding its footing in overseas expansion, starting to try category extensions, with the theme park not yet stable and the licensing system not yet established. How many years Sanrio took to walk this path, Pop Mart may not need the same amount of time. The speed of information dissemination, the conditions of globalization, and the capabilities of China's manufacturing supply chain are all more favorable than they were for Sanrio. But one thing cannot be compressed: the emotional accumulation of consumers is a function of time. Hello Kitty has survived fifty years not because its products are great, but because enough people, over enough time, in enough life scenes, have built real emotional connections with it. Despite the similar development path, Pop Mart's operational logic in the latter half of its overseas expansion is fundamentally different from Sanrio's. Sanrio's overseas expansion relies heavily on the "asset-light" IP licensing model. For example, co-branding with large fast-fashion brands in Europe, or licensing the operation of its theme park to local real estate developers. Sanrio is essentially a copyright company that collects "tolls." Pop Mart, on the other hand, still maintains a strong "asset-heavy" attribute. From in-house IP incubation, industrial mass production, cross-border logistics network construction, to the site selection and operation of 185 overseas direct stores, and the fully self-controlled home appliance supply chain, Pop Mart demonstrates a "full-industry-chain control desire" unique to Chinese companies. Although this strong control model brings enormous financial and management pressure in the short term, it ensures that the IP maintains an extremely unified brand tone across different global markets, avoiding IP value dilution and mindshare overdraw caused by excessive licensing. Returning to our initial question: Is Pop Mart, which sells toys and then refrigerators, following Sanrio's old path of going global? The answer is: Similar in form, but different in spirit. From a formal perspective, expanding from trendy toy blind boxes to large home appliances, and upgrading from shelf retail to immersive theme parks, Pop Mart is indeed practicing a classic IP commercialization route validated by Sanrio and Disney countless times. This ascension from "occupying desktops" to "occupying life" and then to "occupying minds" is a necessary path for any ambitious IP company going global. But at the underlying commercial engine level, Pop Mart is a digitally driven enterprise with China's most cutting-edge retail genes. It does not rely on traditional B2B licensing to rest on its laurels; instead, it leverages its formidable global supply chain infrastructure, keen C-end data feedback mechanisms, and efficient direct-store channel network to turn the loosely defined "IP licensing" into a high-efficiency "category operation" and "retail service" business. In this early summer at the end of April 2026, the 5,999-yuan LABUBU refrigerator may just be a test outpost, and the upgraded rides in Chaoyang Park are just a physical sandbox. With the foundation of 185 overseas stores firmly established, Pop Mart is writing a new chapter in the global consumer goods age of exploration—a "new IP globalization textbook" for Chinese brands, thicker and more explosive than Sanrio's.