Pop Mart (泡泡玛特) is teaming up with Nike (耐克) for a special issue of its in-house magazine play/GROUND, marking the publication’s second edition since launch. The collaboration brings together two brands that rarely share a platform but increasingly speak the same marketing language, one of identity, community, and self-expression.
On the surface, the pairing doesn’t look like an obvious one. Pop Mart operates through artists and IP, building emotional bonds via collectible characters like SKULLPANDA. Nike, meanwhile, works through athletes, painting sport as both performance and personal expression.
Yet play/GROUND positions these as parallel systems. One invites projection and the other demands participation. Both, ultimately, are about how individuals define themselves and how those identities connect with others.
The collaboration issue looks at how this idea plays out in Shanghai, the chosen backdrop for the project and a key market for both brands. The city functions here as a narrative device: a place where global and local cultures intersect, and where personal ambition is constantly in motion.
Contributors include footballer Chen Jinyi (陈晋一), young creatives navigating the city as an open play/GROUND, and artist Chen Yanran (陈嫣然), who reflects on finding both a second home and a new way of seeing the world in Shanghai. Their stories form a composite portrait of the city through lived experience.
The cover features SKULLPANDA creator Xiong Miao. She established her first studio in Shanghai. That story works as a creative arc that the rest of the narratives can hang on. And that’s how they manage to pull off the unlikely pairing.
By foregrounding the maker behind the IP, the magazine manages to put product on the back seat and look more into process. Creativity itself then becomes the point of collaboration. For both brands, it comes across as a meeting of minds and aligning of two different systems of expression into a shared ethos.
