Pop Mart bringing Labubu, designer toys to Durham mall store

Pop Mart’s move into The Streets at Southpoint changes the hunt for Labubu in North Carolina in a very practical way: it gives collectors another permanent place to buy official stock instead of relying on online drops, shipping, or the resale market. The Durham mall’s directory now lists Pop Mart at 6910 Fayetteville Road, and that matters because a fixed storefront is a lot more useful than chasing whatever turns up in a Robo Shop in Fayetteville or Concord.

The timing also fits a bigger Triangle rollout. Pop Mart had already set its first North Carolina store for Crabtree Valley Mall in Raleigh this spring, on the lower level near Center Court, with collectible figures and special releases including Labubu, Molly, Skullpanda and Dimoo. Put the Raleigh and Durham moves together, and North Carolina stops looking like an afterthought for the brand and starts looking like a real market.

For Labubu collectors, the shelf loadout is the important part. Pop Mart’s own character lineup puts The Monsters front and center, and the company says Kasing Lung created that universe in 2015, with Labubu as one of its most prominent characters. That makes the Durham store more than a random mall tenant. It is another official channel for the figure that keeps dragging in both die-hards and casual buyers who know the name from the latest drop frenzy.

The Southpoint location also lands in a mall built for repeat traffic, not one-off curiosity. The Streets at Southpoint describes itself as an award-winning shopping and dining destination with more than 150 shops, while Brookfield Properties calls it a 1.3-plus-million-square-foot super-regional shopping center and open-air lifestyle center. In plain collector terms, Pop Mart is not slipping into a dead corner of retail. It is joining the same kind of national-brand mix that can keep a store busy long after the first opening rush.

That scale fits Pop Mart’s broader play. The company says it already runs more than 350 offline stores and 2,000 Robo Shops in more than 23 countries and regions, so the Durham addition looks less like a test balloon and more like another step in a retail machine that has already gone global. For Southeast buyers, the takeaway is simple: official Labubu access is getting closer, and the next hot series should be a little easier to chase in person than it used to be.