While the world continues to go crazy for LABUBU, many have wondered if the boom and, by extension, POP MART, the toymaker behind the grinning MONSTER, is just a bubble waiting to burst. On 19 June, two headlines came in about the supposed “collapse” of both LABUBU and POP MART share prices.
However, there’s more to the story. The news of a price collapse largely refers to an official LABUBU restock by POP MART, which drove down the previously inflated resale market prices. As for the toymaker’s share price, the focus was on a 6.04% single-day drop on 17 June at the Hong Kong Stock Exchange (HKEX), causing its market value to decrease by 22.3 billion HKD (2.12 billion USD). Pundits believe this was largely due to market turbulence that day, rather than the company’s performance or the designer toy sector.
- #LABUBU 价格崩盘 LABUBU price collapses: 30.03 million views on Weibo, ranking number 1 on the Hot Search list
- #泡泡玛特巨震 POP MART shares tumble: 28.11 million views on Weibo, ranking number 10 on the Hot Search list
POP MART’s restock is, of course, welcomed on Chinese social media as consumers have long been plagued by scalpers and a lack of supply on the LABUBU market, with some even resorting to buying “homeland edition” or fake ones. But on 20 June, the “collapse” of the resale value of LABUBU caused another near 6% drop in POP MART’s, raising fears about bursting the bubble.
As POP MART founder and CEO Wang Ning expressed the intention of reducing supply in case of saturation and fatigue, we await to see how the toymaker aims to balance the demand. With the high performance of LABUBU toys, POP MART’s performance has not yet peaked, but how to achieve a “soft landing” before the craze inevitably fades is a question for the toymaker to answer.