China’s low-cost retailer Miniso has released its own collectible toys to compete with Pop Mart’s spiky-toothed doll Labubu, as a wave of Chinese companies rush to develop their own brands.
The company, which produces a range of items including plush toys and homewares, recently unveiled a strategy to develop its own characters and said it had hired nine artists to produce designs.
Miniso’s move into original intellectual property development comes following the success of Labubu, which has turbocharged sales at Chinese rival Pop Mart, whose market value of HK$440bn (US$56bn) is now more than twice that of US toy groups Mattel and Hasbro combined.