Pop Mart: how millennial entrepreneur Wang Ning became a billionaire selling US$9 mystery Molly dolls from vending machines across China
The latest Chinese entrepreneur to join the three-comma club is 33-year-old Wang Ning. The newly minted billionaire is the founder and chairman of Pop Mart, the largest toy enterprise in China. Spanning 21 countries with more than 200 stores and over 1,000 vending machines – called “roboshops” – the decade-old company’s signature products are trendy figurines packaged in mystery boxes, priced around US$9 each.
Wang owns a majority stake in his Beijing-based firm through holding companies and is now worth US$3.2 billion following his company’s Hong Kong IPO in December last year.
Born in Henan province, Wang graduated with an advertising degree from Zhengzhou University in 2009. After spending a year working in Sina Corporation, the digital media company that owns Weibo, Wang decided he wanted to found his own business.
During a trip to Hong Kong, he was inspired by a retail chain that sold a wide assortment of on-trend products and decided to bring the same concept to mainland China.
In 2010, Wang opened the first Pop Mart store in Beijing’s Zhongguancun, a technology hub that is often referred to as China’s Silicon Valley. The store sold many different types of products, and Wang quickly found himself dealing with myriad issues such as inventory management, staffing and customer service.
In 2014, he enrolled at Peking University’s Guanghua School of Management and met a cohort of like-minded classmates – some of whom later joined Pop Mart’s management team.
To maintain profitability, Pop Mart reduced their product lines and decided to offer only toys, which were their most popular product in 2014. Wang also made the bold move to sell toys in blind boxes, similar to gashapon vending machines in Japan.
Wang further innovated by approaching artists to develop figurines for him. The most prominent of these included Hong Kong’s Kenny Wong, who designed a large-eyed, round-faced doll called Molly. With Wong and Molly on board in 2016, Pop Mart’s sales soared, reaching US$22 million in 2017 and then US$73 million just a year later.
In addition, Pop Mart’s steady success has driven its e-commerce business, which has cushioned the impact of temporary store closures during the pandemic.
Sales from the company’s Paqu platform and its Tmall shopping site grew from less than 10 per cent of revenue in 2017 to a third of its top-line in 2019. On the Singles' Day shopping festival in 2019, Pop Mart topped sales in the action and toy figures category on AliExpress, a cross-border e-commerce platform based in China. Sales on Tmall alone generated US$22 million, exceeding that of international toy brands such as Disney and Lego.
Prior to its initial public offering in 2020, Pop Mart tripled its revenue to US$256.8 million, and secured licensing deals with Walt Disney and Universal Studios.
Pop Mart’s position in China’s toy market is now unrivalled. The company collaborates with dozens of artists, commands 8.5 per cent of the Chinese toy market, offers 85 products which are its intellectual property, hosts China’s largest toy conventions, and is beloved by millions of young Chinese millennials.
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- His 200 stores and 1,000 ‘roboshops’ – selling collectible dolls like Molly, designed by Hong Kong artist Kenny Wong – have made Wang worth US$3.2 billion
- On Singles' Day 2019 the company made sales worth US$22 million on Tmall alone – more than those by brands such as Disney and Lego