Pop Mart Signs Fifth Avenue Lease, Accelerating Labubu's US Expansion

Pop Mart locked down 7,000 square feet at 680 Fifth Avenue, corner of East 54th Street, adding a second major New York City footprint for Labubu and its stable of blind-box collectibles to the brand's rapidly expanding US presence.

The address puts Pop Mart squarely in luxury retail company. The new space sits directly beside Swarovski's 12,000-square-foot emporium and a short walk from the forthcoming Rolex headquarters at 665 Fifth Avenue, designed by architect David Chipperfield and opening this fall. Josef Buchmann owns the building, and Cushman & Wakefield's Steven Soutendijk, who heads the leasing team for the property, confirmed a retail lease was signed, though he declined to name the tenant at the time. The signing fills one of several long-vacant storefronts that had sat empty in the avenue's East 50s corridor.

The Fifth Avenue deal is the second significant New York lease Pop Mart closed in recent months. Back in September 2025, the Beijing-based company locked in a 10-year, 7,000-square-foot lease at Vornado Realty Trust's 1540 Broadway, the tower at the southern corner of West 44th Street that also houses the Disney Store and Forever 21. That Times Square location is set to serve as the US flagship when it opens in the second half of 2026.

Taken together, the two leases signal a deliberate push to shift the US business away from its current online-heavy split. Pop Mart management acknowledged during a recent earnings call that physical store capacity in the American market is insufficient and that online sales account for an excessively high proportion of US revenue. At the time of the 680 Fifth Avenue signing, the brand operated 72 US stores, with an internal target to surpass 100 locations by the end of 2026.

The expansion comes on the back of a record-breaking 2025. Pop Mart posted 37.1 billion yuan (roughly $5.4 billion) in annual revenue, a 185% increase year over year, with net income quadrupling to 12.8 billion yuan. Labubu drove much of that: THE MONSTERS IP alone generated more than 14.1 billion yuan, nearly 40% of total company revenue. Globally, the brand now operates more than 700 stores across 100 countries, including locations at the Oculus on Greenwich Street, the Staten Island Mall, and the Tagram Mall in Flushing, Queens.

The premium of the 680 Fifth Avenue address is not symbolic. The median asking rent along the Fifth Avenue corridor between 49th and 59th Streets was $2,550 per square foot in the second half of 2025, according to the Real Estate Board of New York. At that rate, a 7,000-square-foot space implies annual rent in the range of $17.8 million, which is the kind of commitment a brand makes when it is betting on staying power, not chasing a trend cycle.