Labubu becomes a global consumer category in Accio report
Labubu is now moving like a full consumer category, with retail drops, resale spikes, and TikTok demand all pointing to where prices and scarcity may tighten next.
Pop Mart’s sales on TikTok Shop reached $4.8 million in April 2025, up 89 percent from March. Labubu has stopped behaving like a toy fad and started acting like a market with its own retail, resale, and status tiers. Accio’s 2026 market-trends report treats it as a full consumer category, with pressure showing up in official Pop Mart drops, secondary-market markups on eBay and StockX, and social-commerce heat on TikTok.
From niche blind box to global status object
The appeal still starts with the same ugly-cute formula that made Labubu click in the first place, but the buying logic has shifted far beyond novelty. The line’s rise has been powered by celebrity attention, including the long-running boost from Blackpink’s Lisa, and the wider pop-culture lift is hard to miss once Labubu starts appearing in the hands of Rihanna, Dua Lipa, Kim Kardashian, Brad Pitt, and even the cast of F1: The Movie.
The revenue picture explains why Pop Mart keeps putting Labubu at the center of its calendar. Pop Mart said THE MONSTERS, the IP that includes Labubu, brought in 4.81 billion yuan, about $669.9 million, in the first half of 2025 and accounted for 34.7 percent of total revenue. Pop Mart’s overall first-half revenue reached 13.88 billion yuan, up 204.4 percent year on year, while net profit nearly quadrupled. When one character line is doing that much of the heavy lifting, every restock, collaboration, and overseas rollout becomes part of the buying strategy.
Where demand is showing up fastest
The market does not run through one channel in isolation. Official Pop Mart sales, resale platforms like eBay and StockX, and TikTok commerce all matter, and collectors should read them together. If official listings are moving fast while resale is holding firm, that suggests demand is broadening. If TikTok Shop is surging while in-store access gets tighter, the frenzy is shifting channels instead of fading.
The clearest sign of that channel shift came from TikTok Shop.
The market is wide, but not evenly wide
The Labubu audience is no longer one group, and that matters for pricing. The market spans Gen Z and millennials driven by FOMO and social identity, casual collectors chasing blind-box excitement, and higher-net-worth buyers who treat rare pieces almost like alternative assets. Those segments do not shop the same way, and they do not pull on the market the same way either.
That split is visible in the auction data. Top-tier pieces reach the 170,000-dollar range, and a human-sized Labubu figure sold at a Beijing auction for 1.08 million yuan, about $150,275.51, on June 10, 2025. NBC News converted the same sale to more than $170,000, a reminder that exchange-rate framing can change the headline even when the underlying sale is the same.
That spread is what makes the category tricky for buyers. Standard blind-box stock can still move like a mainstream consumer item, while rarer figures can behave like luxury collectibles with auction-grade upside. Sellers who hold rare pieces are likely looking at a market with real upside, but buyers chasing ordinary releases should expect the most pressure where celebrity buzz, limited runs, and social-media demand overlap.
What the geography says about the next squeeze
China, Southeast Asia, and North America are where the pressure is concentrating. The U.S. is also a major growth engine for Pop Mart, and company commentary in 2025 pointed to further overseas expansion, including the Americas, the Middle East, and Central Europe. Expansion can cut two ways for collectors: more stores can improve access, but a bigger footprint can also widen the buyer pool and keep scarcity intact.
The United Kingdom showed how brittle that balance can be. Pop Mart temporarily paused in-store and roboshop Labubu sales there after safety concerns tied to heavy demand and queueing, while online sales continued.
How collectors should read the next move
Demand is migrating across channels at different speeds. Official drops still matter most for clean entry prices, TikTok Shop can accelerate sell-through fast, and resale platforms like eBay and StockX reveal how much scarcity buyers are willing to absorb once a release is gone. The auction market sits above all of it, setting a ceiling that influences how rare pieces are perceived even among casual buyers.
For buyers, that means timing matters more than ever. Buy during official releases if you want the best shot at retail pricing and clean provenance. Watch TikTok Shop when social buzz spikes, because that is where casual demand can harden into a rush. And keep an eye on overseas rollouts, because every new market can bring both more access and a new wave of competition.
This article was produced by Prism’s automated news system from verified source data, official records, and press releases, then run through automated quality and moderation checks before publishing. The system is built and supervised by the people who set the standards it runs under. Read our full AI policy.
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