Insight Flash: Consumer Edge US & UK Transaction Data Explores Westward Expansion of Pop Mart
Following its well-publicized ascent in China and the broader APAC region, POP MART’s popular collectible has turned its large-eyed gaze Westward. Investors, competitors, and other market participants are eagerly watching to see if POP MART can once again capture lightning in a bottle; this time in markets like the U.S. and Europe. According to Consumer Edge’s U.S. and U.K. card transaction data, it looks like they just might. In just a short seventeen months, from the start of 2024 to May of 2025, POP MART sales in both countries have grown by over 2000%.
What is notable about the brand’s success (aside from its whopping scale) is how highly concentrated it has been in a specific shopper profile. When retailers such as TEMU came to these markets they did so with a strategy to capture as wide an addressable market as possible. Conversely, POP MART looks to have established a very specific shopper profile – namely, young urban women. According to CE transaction data, 78% of POP MART shoppers in the U.S., in the month of May, were 44 years of age or younger. In the U.K. that number was 70% for the same period.
Similarly, when looking at the geographic dispersion of POP MART shoppers, there is a notable dropoff after the largest metro areas. In the U.K. there were twice as many POP MART shoppers in London, during the month of May, as there were in the second-most concentrated region.
In the U.S. the major west coast metro areas of Los Angeles and San Francisco had the largest number of shoppers, with a steep falloff before other major metropolitan centers like New York and Houston.
With such a high concentration of sales in such a specific demographic, the questions for POP MART will be how long can they maintain this pace of growth before they risk saturating their shopper base and can they evolve beyond the young urbanite and generate a broader appeal.
Be the first to know about ecommerce trends, what’s afoot in the hobby, toy & game space, and more with Consumer Edge insights leveraging transaction data. Dive deeper into the market landscape, enhance decision-making, and drive growth by leveraging insights that traditional data might miss. Start transforming your strategies today and set your business on the path to smarter, more profitable outcomes.
Alex Breslin-Johnson is a Senior Insights Analyst for the CEIC. Follow him on LinkedIn.
