As the holiday shopping season approaches, stores of the Chinese toy maker Pop Mart in San Francisco are seeing rising sales, which will also drive more traffic to the streets and boost local consumption, according to experts.
One popular item that may be on this year's gift lists is Pop Mart's star product Labubu.
"He is crazy about Labubu, she is crazy about Labubu. We could just find a chance to come here," a mother told reporters at a local shopping mall.
Some shoppers think the Labubu craze is dropping off slightly, but they're still here buying other Pop Mart toys.
"I'm kind of a collector, so I've always collected a little bit of everything. But I do think people are kind of moving a little bit on from Labubu to kind of other Pop Marts, but still within Pop Mart," said a local resident.
According to retail experts, hard-to-get Labubu models are still fetching high prices in second-hand markets and Pop Mart stores are still doing brisk business.
"It's gone really viral on TikTok. People post unboxing videos, it's probably the most sought after toy, if you want to call it a toy, right for the Christmas season this year," said Clay Cary, a trend analyst from online coupon service tracking service provider CouponFollow.
San Francisco was slow to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic. Stores and restaurants were left empty as many workers stayed home and worked remotely.
That's why it was welcome news in October when Pop Mart held a grand opening for a second San Francisco store at the famed Union Square area and took up residence in a space that was previously vacant since 2019.
At the new two-story location, business was continuing nonstop in the middle of the day on a weekday.
"I probably have 10. And I used to buy them only on TikTok shop, but I happen to walk past Pop Mart and we said, 'let's try our luck,' and we were successful," said a customer.
"Pretty nice. I already got a full set of this one, but I just wanted to get one more," said a Labubu collector.
"I think it's definitely helping drive traffic to downtown, which we need on Powell Street. So many shops have closed. So it's nice to see this driving traffic back here," said another customer
"Some stores post that they have Labubus, there's a line out the door. So, there's like a rabid following on social media. When this is done, kind of like in whether it's strip malls or regular malls or whatever, everyone in that area is going to see the benefit of that because, there's people posting that they will drive an hour to go get a Labubu," said Cary.
The expert said Labubu's blind box marketing concept has also caught on with other companies, ranging from Nike to Sephora to Lego. It's still providing excitement for new customers, and the idea of you don't know what you get until you open it does exceedingly well at getting you to come back for more.
Labubu store boosts community consumption in San Francisco
