Local toymaker wins market with innovation

In addition to retail, Pop Mart also engages in intellectual property operations, working with renowned organizations including The Walt Disney Company.

It collaborates with leading artists and nurtures young artists through courses at art academies around the country. Exhibitions attract hundreds of artists and serve as a talent show for Pop Mart to select partners.

Wang's vision is to be inclusive, and to nurture the entire market.

"If we want to become a company that creates something like Hello Kitty, it would make us a rival to all the toymakers," he said. "But working closely with those toymakers with influential intellectual property, we've become a distributor and collaborator."

Pop Mart has plans to become an incubator for global artists amid its fast expansion to overseas markets. With a presence in 20 countries and regions, Pop Mart's sales have achieved growth worldwide, Wang said.

He hopes overseas sales revenue will eventually contribute half of the company's total revenue, though at present it's below 10 percent.

"China has for so long been a top toy manufacturer, but never a leading toymaker," Wang said. Pop Mart now works with more than 30 domestic top toy manufacturers in Dongguan, Guangdong province, where it has manufactured toys for leading toymakers in the United States and Europe for decades.

"Our orders have taken up more than half of the manufacturing capacity of many such factories," Wang said. "High-end toy orders with more profitability and respect for internationalized manufacturing procedures are incentives to turn Chinese manufacturing capacities to producing toys for Chinese brands."

Art toy sector is still a niche market therefore is challenging to expand to mainstream consumers, said Jason Yu, general manager of Kantar Worldpanel China. However, Pop Mart's capacity to empower art toys with social features and to define them as trendy toys with popular IP and affordable prices have contributed to its high repeating purchase rate, he added.

In addition, Pop Mart's collaboration's and cross-over with other renowned IP have further widened its access to consumers, Yu said.

An art major, Wang said his vision is to make Pop Mart a company that spreads warmth and happiness, and a company that could become the Chinese equivalent of Disney or Netflix.

"We want to stand for well-known intellectual property. When consumers think of our logo, they feel happy," he said.