Output Labubu , Cross-border E-commerce Is At The Forefront Of Brand Going Global

Output Labubu , cross-border e-commerce is at the forefront of brand going global

 

The wind of opening blind boxes is blowing overseas, and there are also many people who collapse due to not being able to open their favorite designs. Labubu has become popular overseas, and this toy with a retail price of several tens of dollars has made many collectors willing to spend multiple times the price to find premium sources on platforms such as eBay, just to collect or buy the version they want.

Pop Mart has already made a name for itself with Labubu in 2024. According to the financial report, Labubu's THE MONSTERS series contributed 3.04 billion yuan in revenue to Bubble Mart in 2024, a year-on-year increase of 726%, making it the company's most profitable IP of the year.

And now, this IP is becoming a powerful tool for Bubble Mart to impact the global market. In 2024, the company's overseas revenue was 5.07 billion yuan, accounting for nearly 40%, achieving a growth of 375.2% compared to 2023. And this is still at the data level.

In May of this year, following a brawl at a shopping center in London over the purchase of Labubu, Pop Mart announced the suspension of Labubu's sales in the UK and plans to completely remove the product from UK stores by June to "prevent any potential safety issues". But public opinion generally believes that this will further stimulate market demand.

 

This background story is simple, without any derivative IP of film, television or gaming products, and is symbolized to the greatest extent possible - a consumer product that can carry any regional, cultural, or social emotional projection, and selects as many target groups as possible. It is easy to find videos of "Labubu pairing" or "Labubu transformation" on social media both domestically and internationally. A trendy game that provides consumers with "creative space" has the potential to break through the circle.

 

At the same time, Labubu's phenomenal popularity has also drawn attention to its distribution channels. According to media reports, since the official entry of Bubble Mart into Alibaba's AliExpress, its sales have consistently ranked first in the trendy gaming category, driving a 300% year-on-year increase in the overall GMV of the AliExpress trendy gaming category.

 

Prior to the overseas 618 shopping festival, "Labubu" had skyrocketed to become a top search term on AliExpress, becoming a popular channel for consumers to purchase genuine products.

 

The joint entry of platforms and brands into a global perspective points to a dual opportunity for cross-border dissemination of consumption and culture.

01. Bubble Mart's "Genuine Proposition"

 

Cartoon characters and cultural symbols are popular worldwide, and Labubu easily reminds people of HelloKitty, the flagship IP of Sanrio Corporation in Japan. In fact, 2024 marks the 50th anniversary of the birth of HelloKitty IP, and Labubu is also shining brightly in 2024, gradually showing a trend to compete with the former.

 

According to Google Trends data, Labubu's search popularity has grown rapidly in the past year and surpassed Hello Kitty in May 2025. According to a research report by JPMorgan, Hello Kitty has accumulated retail sales of $8.45 billion since its launch; The sales of Labubu, launched in 2019, have reached 3 billion yuan in 2024, demonstrating the potential of the latter.

 

But there are significant differences in the commercialization paths of the two 'era IPs'. HelloKitty relies on an authorization model to cover multiple categories, with a stable income structure. We can see the image of HelloKitty in consumer goods such as wallets, jewelry, toys, etc., and its material carriers can be seen everywhere.

 

Bubble Mart, which launched Labubu, attaches great importance to self operated channels and expands its influence through blind box opening gameplay and collaborations with well-known brands. This leads to a key element of Bubble Mart's high recognition in overseas markets: the brand, or in other words, the presence of the genuine IP itself, is particularly strong.

 

In the past decade, China has gradually transformed from a world factory, with the rise of cross-border e-commerce platforms such as AliExpress, Shein, and Temu, prompting domestic enterprises to accelerate market expansion and attract global consumers.

However, "brand output" has always been relatively lacking in the process of domestic enterprises going global. In ancient times, the international market had a stereotype of "copycat" export products, and now domestic enterprises may face problems such as high imitation and unclear brand image when going abroad.

 

For example, in the "Li Gui Store" dispute of Luckin Coffee in Thailand, counterfeit stores carried out comprehensive "imitation" of the logo graphics, fonts, and colors in the Luckin trademark, with only minor differences in logo orientation and color matching. Having awareness of brand protection is the foundation of globalization, on which we can actively expand the connotation of the brand and enrich its added value.

The uniqueness of Pop Mart lies in its core business model of intellectual property, which sells not only physical goods but also deeper emotional and trendy cultural narratives. This naturally places more emphasis on quality control and brand image maintenance, in other words, consumers not only purchase physical items, but also the symbolic value of genuine products.

 

Rejecting counterfeit goods and emphasizing the unique value of genuine products, channel distribution naturally becomes a key part of brand narrative.

On overseas social media platforms such as TikTok, "Lafufu" is being frequently searched, indicating that it is a knockoff product of "Labubu". Despite its rough craftsmanship and parts such as limbs that cannot move freely, it is still highly sought after due to its high imitation of the original version. According to foreign media reports, overseas consumers purchased Lafufu on Shopee for SGD 9.77 (approximately USD 7.5), while the official price of the same size genuine product on Bubble Mart is SGD 24.9.

 

Many Lafufu styles on Shopee are priced as low as SGD 0.60 and do not require queuing to grab a spot.

Or it may be due to an excessive yearning for trends and community culture; Or it may be unbearable for official stores to queue for hours at a time, with unpredictable stockouts, counterfeit and imitation products inevitably circulating in the market, and even deconstructing the narrative system of IP in a humorous way.

 

At this point, looking back at the blueprint for domestic enterprises to go global, it is not difficult to find that in ensuring controllable channels, the cooperation between enterprises and cross-border e-commerce is a "natural" one.

 

02. Brand going global, platform adding fuel

Brand going global is a climbing process that combines knowledge and action, balancing global brand strategy with localized execution, while also facing the dual pressures of rising costs and compliance risks.

 

Knowledge is more about guiding ideas. In recent years, cross-border commerce has been transforming from traditional supply chain overseas to "brand+channel" comprehensive overseas expansion. Compared to simply focusing on products, it now places more emphasis on the output of brand comprehensive concepts.

 

'Xing' is an exploration at the practical level, and cross-border transactions first need to address the huge physical leap, so channel strategies are particularly crucial. Firstly, it is necessary to ensure the circulation of genuine products in order to convey the brand's commitment to quality, craftsmanship, and even values; Polish more retail touchpoints (such as packaging and after-sales) here to shape a unified brand image.

 

The selection of offline channels by earlier brands that went global fully reflects this caution. For example, ANTA mainly adopts distribution methods in Southeast Asia, cooperating with local sports equipment retailers to rapidly expand its influence in different markets and avoid business risks.

 

In recent years, due to the rapid development of cross-border e-commerce overseas, online channels are receiving more attention from enterprises.

Because e-commerce platforms are not only sales channels, but also integrate infrastructure such as payment, logistics, and new marketing (live streaming sales and algorithm push), they are more scalable compared to traditional channels. In addition, cross-border global coverage via the Internet is less restricted by geography.

 

In addition, "brand going global" is not only a demand for enterprise expansion, but also a choice for cross-border e-commerce companies to enrich their high-quality supply.

 

Last April, there were media reports that AliExpress was preparing to "subsidize brands with billions of dollars to go global". In March of this year, AliExpress released its latest 2025 brand going global plan, with the goal of supporting 1000 new brands to achieve annual sales exceeding one million US dollars.

 

The new stance has been analyzed in the article "Completing the Last Piece of the Puzzle, AliExpress's' Billion Subsidy 'Strengthens Brand Supply". The categories covered by cross-border e-commerce are gradually expanding from white label and low value added products to high value added products, with the ultimate goal of enabling platforms to also have brand effects, in order to build a true moat in overseas markets.

 

So looking back, Pop Mart joined AliExpress in 2019 and opened an official store, quickly accumulating operational experience with the help of AliExpress's data resources. AliExpress has also placed advertising spaces for Pop Mart in countries such as the UK, Australia, and Japan, helping it achieve more exposure. The current popularity of Labubu can be considered a win-win situation after mutual benefit between the platform and the brand.

In addition to being among the top in the industry, more well-known domestic trendy gaming brands such as 52TOYS, JOYTOY, Playism, and Aofei Entertainment have also joined AliExpress. Other high-tech brands such as Yushu Technology, Anke Innovation, and Xiaomi have also chosen to go global through AliExpress channels.

 

As mentioned earlier, a business model that emphasizes intellectual property rights will pay special attention to the consistency of quality control and brand image, which coincides with the platform's demand to shape channel credibility.

The platform reduces the uncertainty of channel distribution through cross-border logistics and operational support, which is also a two-way benefit. For example, Tmall Global focuses on promoting the quality assurance of imported goods by introducing third-party authoritative quality inspection agencies to jointly participate in the quality inspection of imported goods; Upgrade source code tracing and other anti-counterfeiting features using micro texture and other technologies.

 

The platform strictly controls the distribution path of "authentic products", which is equivalent to maintaining the competitiveness of both the brand and the platform itself.

 

03. Write at the end

But from a different perspective, the prevalence of Labubu knockoff imitations also highlights the issue of product competitiveness to some extent.

The narrative of IP drives the symbolic or emotional premium of products, leading to demand overflow and insufficient supply, and imitations take the opportunity to fill the gap. There are two dangers in this, one is the visible shortcomings in production capacity, quality control, anti-counterfeiting awareness, etc; The second question is whether the unique symbolic value endowed by Pop Mart for IP can be sustained and expanded in the long run, and whether the "cultural interpretation power" of moisture-proof play can be taken away by imitations.

 

Bubble Mart itself can be considered a company with a very advanced global awareness. Its official website shows that the company's globalization began in 2018, and by the end of 2024, there were 130 stores in Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan, and overseas, as well as 192 robot stores. In April of this year, we took advantage of the current situation and launched the largest organizational restructuring since the establishment of the company, comprehensively upgrading the global organizational structure.

 

But how to build a true competitive barrier is still going through the test of time and the market. The image of HelloKitty has undergone three generations of designer improvements in order to keep up with trends and adapt to the iteration of aesthetic and social trends. After the millennium, through several precise collaborations, it has been deeply integrated with popular culture, becoming a cultural label with global influence.

 

Just like how the popularity of trendy games is supported by cross-border e-commerce, the formation of a cultural label is not just an isolated clue.