How did a “ugly” Labubu counterattack from an overseas unpopular IP to a top domestic one? Bubble Mart gave a textbook demonstration with the reverse play of “going to sea first and then counterattacking”: first lock Thailand as an emotional tipping point, use Lisa and other global stars to plant grass to make social currency, and then use overseas rush news to ignite domestic topics in reverse, and finally turn celebrities, purchasing agents, and amateurs into tap water. This article reviews the complete path of “overseas voice leverages local sales”, disassembles the four key actions of market selection, star tying, topic creation, and rhythm control, and provides a replicable methodology for all consumer brands that want to go overseas and make explosive products.
The summer of 2025 belongs to Labubu, and with its phenomenal out of the circle, the company behind it, Bubble Mart, ushered in a double harvest of performance and stock price, which can be described as making enough face and inside.
As for why Labubu suddenly became popular, most people believe that Labubu’s cunning and ugly design caters to the aesthetics of the times; Bubble Mart’s blind box model and hunger marketing contributed to the explosion.
But this doesn’t seem to explain “why Labubu”, not other IPs with personalized designs and blind box sales.
You know, Bubble Mart won the copyright of Labubu in 2019, but from 2019 to 2022, Labubu is not only far less popular than the “head of the flower” Molly, but also does not rank in the entire IP sequence of Bubble Mart, and is a perennial “cold bench player” in the family.
We believe that the real reason behind Labubu’s popularity is that Bubble Mart no longer hits the domestic market, but counterattacks the domestic market from overseas, and leverages the popularity of the domestic market with overseas voice by identifying key markets, binding overseas stars, driving stakeholders and other marketing techniques.
This article will break it down in detail –
- Why is it the right move for Bubble Mart to go to sea?
- In the matter of going overseas, what is the practice of Bubble Mart worth learning from other companies?
PART1 Choose the right market to get twice the result with half the effort
Labubu’s popularity in China did not happen overnight, it is a conspiracy completed step by step by Bubble Mart, which can be roughly divided into four stages:
2023.10-2024.08: Thailand breakthrough
In September 2023, Bubble Mart opened its first store in Thailand, and in October, it released the Labubu rubber doll generation product “Heartbeat Macaron” series, which is loved by Thai consumers. In April 2024, Thai actress Lisa released a number of Amway videos in a row, making Labubu a national-level IP, and the popularity of Google searches reached its peak.
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2024.09-2025.03: Southeast Asia became popular
The popularity of the Thai market has driven neighboring Southeast Asian markets such as Malaysia and Singapore. From September to December 2024, Labubu’s popularity in Southeast Asia remained high, and two months later, neighboring Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan also set off a boom.
2025.04-2025.06: Entered Europe and the United States
Driven by global streaming and social media such as Instagram, TikTok, and Youtube, Labubu’s popularity has spread to developed countries such as the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, Japan and South Korea. With the help of European and American stars such as Rihanna, the Kardashians, and Beckham, the search popularity in Europe and the United States reached its peak in May and June.
2025.05 to present: Counteroffensive in the mainland
At almost the same time, Chinese mainland netizens began to frequently brush the news that “Labubu is on fire abroad” and “British scalpers are fighting to grab Labubu”, which triggered a social media carnival and rush buying boom in the local market, and a large number of new players entered the pit.
It is not uncommon for trendy toys to have a global layout, but most brands are local and then go overseas, such as international brands Be@rbrick and Jellycat, Chinese brands 52Toys and TopToy, while Labubu has started to break the circle from overseas, leveraged the local market with overseas markets, and finally achieved an exponential jump.
Although it is blooming more overseas now, have you ever wondered why Labubu chose Thailand as the starting point for “breaking the circle”?
Of course, you can say that there is a certain amount of chance in this, but the keen business sense and rapid adjustment ability contained in it must have something to learn from.
“Han Ri Xin”: What seems to be the right option is actually a detour
In fact, in 2018, Bubble Mart began to plan its overseas business, and its first choice was not Thailand, but South Korea. Moon Deok-yi, then head of Bubble Mart’s overseas business, explained that he chose South Korea because of its prosperity of trend culture, and the Korean entertainment industry has a strong influence on neighboring countries and regions [1]. The subtext is: if you win the Korean market, you can attract many countries, including China and Southeast Asian countries, to follow suit.
The radiation effect mentioned by Wen Deyi does exist in the trendy toy industry, and the most typical example is the Be@rbrick building block bear. From 2005 to 2015 Be@rbrick cleverly took advantage of the leading trend culture of South Korea, Hong Kong and Taiwan compared to the mainland market, and quickly became popular in the mainland by cooperating with popular trendsetters in South Korea, Hong Kong and Taiwan.
Bubble Mart wants to replicate the success of Be@rbrick in South Korea, so in 2020, Bubble Mart opened its first overseas direct store in Gangnam-gu, Seoul. However, time has passed, and after events such as THAAD and Korean restrictions, the influence of the Korean Wave on Chinese consumers has weakened, and the competitiveness of local IPs such as Line Friends and Sticky Monster should not be underestimated, and it is difficult for Labubu to break the circle.
Another option after South Korea – the Japanese market is under more competitive pressure. The “country of animation” has always been exported to the outside world, and very few overseas IPs can break through the siege in Japan, and the trendy toy IPs that once swept the world such as Be@rbrick and Sonny Angel are all made in Japan.
Avoiding Japan and South Korea, which were surrounded by masters, Bubble Mart quickly shifted its focus to Southeast Asia and focused on Singapore. It’s still the same logic, but Asia is the strongest and Southeast Asia is the strongest – Singapore is the most radiant market in Southeast Asia.
Singapore’s biggest advantage is its strong purchasing power, and as the second largest economy in Southeast Asia, its per capita GDP far exceeds that of other countries. But the problem is that Singaporeans have money but don’t have time to spend it.
In 2021, British merchant Sleepseeker conducted a national fatigue index survey, and Singaporeans ranked first in the world in terms of fatigue index and second in the world in average working hours, far exceeding other Southeast Asian countries. The proportion of migrant workers is very high, and compared with the entertainment and social networking brought by trendy toys, working to make money is the main tone of Singapore.
Thailand: The correct answer in the dim light
At this time, another country that has been concerned by Bubble Mart for a long time but has never been put on the highest priority has entered the field of view – Thailand.
Although it is not as rich as Singapore and Malaysia, and not as good as Indonesia’s population size and growth potential, Thailand is one of the few countries in Southeast Asia that meets the requirements of money, leisure, buying and sharing.
Thais are rich. Thailand’s total GDP and per capita GDP are among the top in Southeast Asia. Indonesia, which has the highest GDP in Southeast Asia, has a per capita GDP of about half that of Thailand [2].
Thais have leisure. Compared to the fast pace of Singapore, Thais are generally more optimistic and laid-back. They believe that good relationships are more important than career success [3]. Labubu’s popularity in Thailand is largely due to the spread between acquaintances, and even Lisa was pulled by a friend to visit Bubble Mart.
Thais love to shop and consume. Thailand’s offline channels account for more than 80% of the retail market [3], Thailand is a country that emphasizes offline retail, and shopping with relatives and friends is a daily life for Thai people. Compared with ordinary products, the social attributes and blind box mechanism of trendy toys make them an important medium for offline gatherings, chats and entertainment interactions, so they have more advantages in the offline field.
Thais love to go online and share. Thailand has an Internet population penetration rate of more than 80%, and the user penetration rate of Facebook and TikTok is as high as 70% and 49.3%, respectively, making it one of the countries with the highest usage rate in the world [3]. Therefore, Thai consumers are easily planted by social media KOLs, if it is a national star like Lisa, the influence will be magnified several times, and in turn, social media can add leverage to Labubu’s popularity, so that relevant content can spread faster.
As a result, we have all seen that in April 2024, as soon as Lisa’s video of sharing Labubu was released, it quickly detonated Thailand’s social media platform, and “Lisa’s same style” quickly broke the circle among Thai young people, and going to Bubble Mart to sweep goods became a reserved program for Thai young people to go shopping.
So far, Labubu has completely opened up the closed loop of social media diffusion – acquaintance communication – traffic monetization in Thailand.
PART2 Take advantage of the stars to break the game cleverly
When it comes to Lisa’s appeal, it is impossible to avoid the marketing link of “star planting”, which is not new but crucial, which is a typical top-down consumption boom through the star effect.
But this was not the case with Bubble Mart in the earlier days, such as Molly, which was launched in 2016, which was the IP selected by Wang Ning, the founder of Bubble Mart, by soliciting user opinions on Weibo, which belongs to the bottom-up development route of spontaneous communication by users.
The comparison of search popularity between these two methods is very obvious: Molly’s popularity has grown slowly and steadily, while Labubu’s popularity has suddenly become popular, and the search popularity has skyrocketed.
Judging from the results, the revenue of The Monsters (mainly including Labubu, Zimomo, Mokoko and other IPs) with a top-down model has far exceeded that of Molly in the bottom-up model, and its revenue contribution to Bubble Mart will also jump to the first place in 2024.
There is no problem with Molly’s steady and slow accumulation of fans, but compared with daily consumer goods, “useless things” such as trendy toys need to provide emotional value, status symbols and circle tickets, and the star platform is the fastest and most direct embodiment of this value.
Just like Be@rbrick advocates rebellion and individuality, they will look for Edison Chen, Jay Chou, Quan Zhilong, Huang Zitao and other celebrities with corresponding characteristics endorsements, Jellycat also quickly got out of the circle in the early days through the “second generation of stars” such as Beckham’s daughter and Tom Cruise’s daughter. In trendy toy products with strong culture and strong emotions, consumers especially need to lead, looking for star KOLs who can represent brand values to spread, which can not only lead IP values and aesthetics, but also effectively attract potential audiences.
Lisa, the most critical figure in Labubu’s star matrix, was actually Bubble Mart’s “tap water” in the early days, and accidentally fell into Labubu while shopping with friends (according to the social media management platform Hopper HQ, Lisa’s fee per Instagram post in 2024 will be $623,000[4], which is not Bubble Mart’s business behavior based on Lisa’s high-frequency sharing in April 2024).
Because of Lisa’s super influence in Thailand, Labubu quickly opened up the Thai market, almost to the point of one piece per person. As a token of gratitude, Labubu creator Long Jiasheng gave Lisa a huge Mega Labubu Tec doll, and Bubble Mart has also publicly thanked him many times.
A reliable speculation is that Bubble Mart keenly grasped Lisa’s tap water flow this time and quickly established a strongly bound business cooperation with Lisa – after Labubu, Lisa not only shared other IPs of Bubble Mart on social media platforms, such as Crybaby, etc., but also talked about her love for Bubble Mart in media interviews.
In November 2024, when Lisa was interviewed by the well-known American fashion magazine “Vanity Fair”, she went through almost the entire Bubble Mart series, from Labubu, Crybaby, Dimoo to Pucky, which is also the most out-of-the-circle video recommended by Lisa for Bubble Mart.
Since then, the Crybaby Powerpuff Girls series, the Dimoo cloud companion series, and the Pucky Meow Tumbler series, which appeared in the Vanity Fair interview, have all been robbed.
Image source: Screenshot of Vanity Fair Youtube account
The strong binding with Lisa also provides the best incision for Bubble Mart to expand in the European and American markets. As the Asian star with the most Instagram followers, Lisa has 106 million followers and a wide fan base in Europe and the United States. Moreover, since 2023, Lisa has made strong entries in Europe and the United States, whether it is starring in the Crazy Horse show or participating in “White Lotus Resort”, it has its own topic popularity.
As a veteran song and dance show, Crazy Horse Show’s search popularity has continued to decline in the past 20 years, but when Lisa appeared in September 2023, the popularity soared to the highlight moment of 2007. Comparing the popularity of the three seasons of “White Lotus Resort” horizontally, it will also be found that Lisa’s appearance in 2025 will make the third season significantly more popular than the previous two seasons.
Labubu replicated this trend, and the pace of entering Europe and the United States accelerated significantly after Lisa’s platform, and also drove European and American stars such as Rihanna, Dua Lipa, and Beckham to enter Labubu, further setting off a “Labubu storm”.
After Bubble Mart tested the waters of pop-up stores in the United States in June 2022, it did not open its first directly operated store until October 2023, but by the first half of 2024, the number of stores in the United States will reach 10, and in the first half of 2025, it will further increase to 35, and the United States will surpass Hong Kong, Macao, Taiwan, and Thailand to become the overseas market with the largest number of Bubble Mart stores.
Thanks to Labubu’s strong performance in the European and American markets, Bubble Mart’s revenue in the North American market will increase by 556.9% year-on-year in 2024, and North America will also become the fastest-growing market outside of Southeast Asia.
From the breakthrough of the Thai market to the popularity of Europe and the United States, Bubble Mart has achieved low-cost and efficient breaking the circle by binding Lisa, a star with topic popularity and market influence, and cleverly “borrowing arrows from grass boats”.
PART3 Link China to pave the way in advance
Many brands are almost completely separated from the operation of the local market when doing overseas markets, and they are not related to each other, but Bubble Mart attaches great importance to the linkage between domestic and foreign countries.
Overseas dynamics are transformed into domestic heat in a timely manner to warm up for domestic outbreaks
Labubu’s popularity in China is not without precursors. Before June 2025, Labubu’s dynamics and progress in overseas markets have been transformed into domestic hot searches to some extent, warming up for the domestic outbreak.
Looking back at the timeline of Labubu’s voice penetrating the domestic market from overseas, there are three very important public opinion nodes:
1) Reverse purchasing
In April 2024, Labubu exploded in Thailand, and many Thais asked Chinese friends to buy Labubu, or traveled to China to sweep goods at Bubble Mart stores, and Thais directly squatted in Bubble Mart’s domestic live broadcast room to place orders.
At this time, a large number of hot posts such as “Thai friends asked me to buy Labubu” and “Thais captured the Bubble Mart live broadcast room” appeared on social media platforms, and since then, a number of strategy posts for reverse purchasing Labubu have been derived, and the first batch of “hooks” have been put on Chinese netizens.
2) Cultural and tourism linkage
In July 2024, taking advantage of Labubu’s popularity in Thailand, Bubble Mart and the Tourism Authority of Thailand launched the “Labubu Adventure in Thailand” project, Labubu was awarded the title of “Magical Thailand Experience Officer”, Thailand gained tourism traffic, and Bubble Mart gained Labubu’s popularity in China and Thailand.
To this end, Bubble Mart planned a huge communication action, through Labubu’s appearance as a special guest in the Thai-style plot, the airport pick-up of Labubu by the Minister of Culture and Tourism of Thailand, the customized travel route of Labubu, and the opening of Bubble Mart’s first Labubu theme store, so that Labubu made high-frequency appearances in a short period of time, realizing the simultaneous breakthrough of China and Thailand.
In the Chinese mainland, Bubble Mart increased its horsepower communication, not only inviting a huge lineup of domestic media groups to Thailand to report on the opening of the theme store, but also continuing to ferment the heat through self-media channels, and the Weibo topic #Thai minister personally picked up the female star of the Chinese baby circle# successfully topped the hot search list, so that Labubu’s popularity in China further fermented.
3) Fermentation of public opinion
Starting from April 2025, the popularity of Bubble Mart will spread to Europe and the United States, and its stores in the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Italy, the Netherlands, South Korea and other places have long queues.
These news quickly spread to China in the form of graphics and videos, and when the camera followed the long and winding queue and finally froze on the store sign of “POP MART”, the curiosity and desire to explore of domestic netizens were also amplified to the extreme.
In addition, the popularity of public opinion on social media platforms has also begun to ferment, “foreigners are crazy to grab Labubu”, “British people fight to grab Labubu”, “pirated Labubu conquers the world” and other topics have emerged, driven by national self-confidence and curiosity, domestic consumers’ enthusiasm for Labubu’s purchase enthusiasm has also risen, thus ushering in a wave of domestic rush buying in June.
Choose international and domestic influential stars to drive local consumption with international trends
In addition to overseas stars such as Lisa, Rihanna, and Kardashian, domestic stars are also key partners of Bubble Mart:
- Labubu and JJ Lin launched a joint model;
- Michelle Yeoh, Liu Yifei, Liu Wen, and Shu Qi wore Labubu and Crybaby to go out on the street;
- Hua Chenyu and Lu Han took turns wearing Bubble Mart dolls at the concert, like walking advertising posters.
These stars seem to have a wide coverage, but they have a common trait: they have a dual influence at home and abroad.
Internally, these stars can mobilize the domestic market well. For example, their outfits and accessories are easy to imitate by ordinary consumers. And the data of the new red platform shows that Lisa has always been at the forefront of the domestic topic list, Lisa Crazy Horse Show has nearly 400 million views on Xiaohongshu, and the number of views of new songs is also nearly 85 million.
externally, it can also effectively use international influence to create a “brand filter”. At present, in the fields of trend, fashion, culture and other fields, consumers still have filters for overseas aesthetics and fashion trends, driven by international stars and overseas consumers, which can form consumption filters in China.
At the same time, the concept of “Chinese brands going overseas” caters to the trend of domestic national self-confidence. Compared with brands focusing on the local market, the story of Chinese brands being robbed overseas can attract many passers-by and is more conducive to counterattacking the domestic market. Compared with the domestic Red Sea fighting, this is a “shortcut” that has been verified several times.
PART4 Relies on “tap water” and low-cost marketing
We once mentioned when analyzing Laopu Gold that behind the explosion of Laopu Gold is a low-cost marketing spontaneously participated by department stores, purchasing agents, and bloggers (for details, please click to view the secret of consumer brand growth by the founder of Laopu Gold).
A similar situation also exists in Bubble Mart, but slightly different from Laopu Gold, in the celebrity KOL link, Bubble Mart did invest real money, while a large number of purchasing agents, bloggers, and passers-by provided a large amount of “tap water flow” for Labubu’s popularity.
Celebrities spend a lot of money to increase potential energy
According to the financial report, Bubble Mart’s distribution and sales expenses in 2024 will increase from 2 billion yuan to 3.65 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 82.1%. Although the financial report explains that it is mainly due to the increase in employee benefits and leasing expenses brought about by store expansion, if estimated by store size, the number of Bubble Mart’s global stores will increase by about 20% year-on-year in 2024, which is far from the 80% increase in sales expenses.
It is reasonable to guess that outside the store, Bubble Mart’s sales expenses have increased significantly, including celebrity cooperation and delivery.
According to incomplete statistics from the growth black box, from March to June this year, at least more than 50 domestic stars released Labubu’s unboxing videos or graphic videos wearing Labubu to attend events and go out on the street. Such a large-scale celebrity publicity cannot be all “tap water”, it is more likely to: heavy cooperation of the head star + shallow cooperation of the tail star + partial tap water.
Moreover, the publicity of many celebrities is obviously commercial cooperation – for example, Li Meng wore Labubu when he attended the Shanghai Film Festival, and Hua Chenyu took turns wearing a variety of Bubble Mart IPs at concerts. According to Qiangua data, Bubble Mart’s investment amount, grass planting notes, and grass planting experts have exceeded 99% of the players in the same industry.
“Tap water” saves a lot of money and does high marketing leverage
Although it spends a lot on cooperation with top stars, the tap water traffic from passers-by, bloggers, and purchasing agents still makes a great contribution to Bubble Mart’s marketing rates.
From 2019 to 2022, Bubble Mart’s sales expense ratio increased to a high of 32% year by year, but while Labubu exploded in 2024, this data declined significantly, falling by 4 percentage points.
In the past three months, passers-by, amateurs, and junior experts have contributed more than 90% of Labubu-related notes on Xiaohongshu. This shows that Labubu relies heavily on small and medium-sized bloggers and ordinary netizens in China, and the existence of purchasing agents has made this wave of popularity even more intense.
The underlying logic of bloggers, passers-by, and scalpers being willing to spontaneously promote Bubble Mart is that although they do not directly pay advertising endorsement fees, Bubble Mart can obtain corresponding returns through fan drainage, purchasing price differences, fame and popularity, etc.
For purchasing agents, the more popular Labubu, the higher the purchasing price and the more profit from the price difference. In June, the original price of 99 yuan Labubu’s “Heartbeat Macaron” series was once speculated to 400 yuan per piece, with a net profit of 300%.
For the media, Labubu naturally has its own topicality, from traditional media to self-media bloggers, everyone’s views may be different, but without exception they have joined this Labubu’s free publicity, further boosting Labubu’s popularity.
Among them, social media and short video platforms such as Xiaohongshu and Douyin have been particularly helpful, accompanied by the brainwashing Labubu theme song, with the Reuters pictures of major stars, the psychology of netizens to hunt for curiosity and gossip has been fully satisfied, and then discussed and shared with colleagues, relatives, friends, and friends, which unconsciously promoted the dissemination.
It is worth noting that compared with the celebrity cooperation model of inviting spokespersons and directly shooting advertisements, Bubble Mart has adopted a more topical and disseminated social media daily sharing and picture posting model, which conveys the impression of “celebrities spontaneously entering the pit” to consumers to a certain extent, arousing consumers’ curiosity and desire to consume.
Written at the end
For Bubble Mart, Labubu’s popularity may have been unexpected in the early stages, but whether it is quickly adjusting the arrangement of key markets or screening important stars to bind cooperation, Bubble Mart has changed quickly enough.
And compared with sticking to the local market and obsessing over going big first and then going overseas, Bubble Mart keenly grasped the opportunity, flexibly adjusted its strategic policy, and finally achieved corner overtaking.
After Labubu, Bubble Mart has been working non-stop on Dimoo and Crybaby. Some celebrities have already begun to stand for Crybaby, but whether they can replicate Labubu’s success and whether Bubble Mart can once again verify this methodology for overseas counterattacks on the domestic market remains to be verified by time.
Resources:
[1] Bubble Mart Vice President talks about going overseas: the first stop in South Korea has entered 21 countries and regions|The Paper
[2] GDP per capita in Southeast Asian countries|IMF World Economic Outlook, April 2024 edition
[3] Thailand Market Research Insights|Yueshu Insights
[4] 2024 Global Instagram Rich List Ranking: Lisa wins first place in Asia|Tatler
