Meet the new billionaire who made a fortune selling toys in blind boxes
Wang Ning, 33, is readying his fast-growing, Beijing-based company Pop Mart for an IPO—and an expansion beyond China.
He’s been pondering how to build Pop Mart since graduating in 2009 from Zhengzhou University, where he studied advertising. He worked for a year at China-based Sina Corp., a digital media company that runs the country’s Twitter clone, Weibo, but found himself wanting to create his own thing. On a trip to Hong Kong, he noticed a popular retail chain called LOG-ON that sold a mish-mash of toys, cosmetics and stationary. He figured a similar format might work on the mainland.
“Blind boxes are so much different from what I have seen in the past,” says one devoutly loyal collector. “I like the toys’ design, and the experience is a bit of a gamble.”in Japan. These gashapons dispense toys at random in little, clear canisters—quite like the red-colored, quarters-based ones that spit out gumballs and little toys here in the States. Wang liked the element of surprise but wanted to sell his products in more upscale packaging.
Wang has started hosting toy shows—long staples in the West—in Beijing to find new talent. With these creatives, Wang tries his best to maintain a hands-off style. “We will give some advice related to consumer trends,” he said. “But we respect the artists’ wishes.” Pop Mart is not the only seller of blind boxes, but it has a lead. According to industry-research firm Frost and Sullivan, Pop Mart has 8.5% of the market; its next closest rival, which was not named, had 7.7%. For now, Pop Mart isn’t officially sold beyond mainland China, but its products can be purchased through Alibaba’s global e-commerce platform Aliexpress and some items have shown up on Amazon and eBay.
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