Wang Ning: The man who turned toys into $25B

A toy that tells no story. A box that reveals nothing. A brand built on the radical idea that the less a product does, the more people want it. In the pantheon of Chinese billionaires, there are battery kings, algorithm emperors, and water tycoons. And then there is Wang Ning, a 38-year-old who built a $25.5 billion fortune by selling small plastic figurines in sealed boxes. According to the 2025 Hurun Rich List, the founder and CEO of Pop Mart is one of the fastest-rising billionaires in China. His wealth climbed 155 places in ranking, and his net worth grew sixfold in a single year, powered by the global Labubu phenomenon. But what’s really interesting isn’t the toys — it’s the unique way the business behind them works around the world. The boy who loved two contradictory things Wang Ning was born in 1987 in Zhengzhou, Henan province, during an era of profound transition for the Chinese economy. From childhood, he was drawn to two domains that, by conventional wisdom, should never coexist: art and commerce. “Art pursues uniqueness,” Wang said in an interview with People’s Daily. “Business is about universality. These two things are fundamentally contradictory.” Most people resolve this tension by choosing a side. Wang Ning spent his career forcing them to fuse. He moved to Beijing to study at the University of International Business and Economics (UIBE), where he launched a campus lifestyle magazine and opened a small retail store selling imported goods to students. Neither venture was a runaway financial success; both were plagued by tight margins and logistical headaches. However, those early trials taught him something essential: people do not just buy physical products. They buy feelings, curated identities, and an acute sense of belonging. He realized that modern consumers were starving for micro-moments of emotional resonance. In 2010, he opened the first Pop Mart store in Beijing’s Zhongguancun district, which, back then, was commonly referred to as “China’s Silicon Valley.” Originally, Pop Mart was a lifestyle retail store selling a chaotic mix of stationary, digital accessories, and cosmetics. The store struggled. For five years, Pop Mart existed as an unremarkable retail chain with low profit margins, staggering inventory costs, and no clear identity. In 2016, everything changed. While reviewing sales reports, Wang noticed something surprising: a series of imported blind box figurines kept outperforming everything else in the store. They weren’t just selling well — customers were coming back to buy them again and again. That insight forced a decision. Instead of continuing to stock a wide range of products, Wang chose to focus entirely on art toys. Around that time, he met Hong Kong designer Kenny Wong, the creator of Molly, a wide‑eyed girl with a pouty expression and an unreadable face. Wang secured the exclusive rights to the character and streamlined production to make the toys at scale. He packaged Molly in the now‑familiar blind box format and brought her to market. The gamble paid off. What had once been a struggling retail chain quickly transformed into one of China’s most recognizable pop culture brands. The blind box breakthrough: Designing for anticipation The blind box is, on the surface, a simple idea: a sealed, uniform package containing one of several possible figurines, with the buyer remaining unaware of which specific design they will receive until they tear open the packaging. It is, in effect, a lottery ticket dressed as a designer toy. But Wang Ning understood something deeper about behavioral economics. He was not selling molded PVC. He was selling anticipation — the psychological high of the moment right before the box is opened, when every outcome is still entirely possible. “The more useless a thing is, the more valuable it is,” Wang Ning told Chinese media. This was a clever marketing move, but it reflected a sharp understanding of how young consumers think. In a world overflowing with practical products, what often stands out are the things that offer emotion and beauty. A faucet serves a purpose. An ornamental fountain doesn’t — but people stop to admire it. Pop Mart’s toys fall into that second category. They aren’t necessities but objects of feeling. The blind box model also addressed a long-standing challenge in the designer toy industry: scale. For years, art toys were expensive, produced in small batches, and sold mainly in niche galleries. They were hard to mass-produce without losing their exclusivity. Wang Ning changed that. By introducing randomness — and carefully controlling rarity — he turned collecting into an experience. Each box became a small gamble, a moment of suspense. Some “hidden” editions appear at odds as low as 1 in 144. To complete a full set or land a rare figure, fans often buy multiple boxes. That cycle has fueled a booming resale market online, where limited editions can sell for many times their original price. In the process, Pop Mart’s figurines have evolved beyond toys. For many Gen Z and millennial consumers, they’ve become collectibles, status symbols, and even a form of cultural currency. From China’s Disney to a global Pop Mart For years, Wang Ning described his ambition as becoming “the Disney of China.” By 2023, he had revised that goal entirely. “We no longer hope to become the Disney of China,” he said. “We hope to become a global Pop Mart.” The distinction matters. Disney is a storytelling machine. Pop Mart is an emotional experience platform that does not depend on narrative. This insight — that successful IP does not need a backstory — is one of Wang Ning’s most radical contributions to brand thinking. Labubu, the spiky-eared creature designed by Hong Kong artist Kasing Lung, has little origin story, no television series, and no film yet (a Labubu movie is in development with Sony). Instead, it has a face that is simultaneously unsettling and endearing. It became a global phenomenon not because of what it means but because of how it makes people feel. Pop Mart’s global expansion has been deliberately “clumsy,” as Wang Ning puts it. All stores worldwide are directly operated, not franchised. Site selection follows a strict rule: “either a global commercial landmark or very close to art.” In 2025, Pop Mart’s international revenue surged by nearly 292% year-on-year to 16.3 billion RMB ($2.4 billion), accounting for nearly 44% of the company’s total sales. In Southeast Asia, the Middle East, and Europe, Labubu has become a status symbol carried by celebrities and tastemakers. Lessons for leaders Wang Ning’s journey from a struggling retailer to a $25 billion founder offers lessons that extend far beyond the toy industry: Resolve conflicts rather than avoid them. The tension between art and commerce, scarcity and scale, and niche and mass aren’t problems to be solved; they’re creative forces to be harnessed. Design for emotion, not function. In an era of functional overload, enduring products often carry emotional value. Don’t ask what your products can do; ask what feelings they can evoke. Restraint is a competitive advantage. The “70% full” philosophy borrows from the wisdom of stopping before excess. Knowing when not to expand is just as important as knowing when to expand. Build a system, not just a product. Pop Mart’s IP incubation model — discovering, nurturing, and promoting artistic talent — is a platform, not a product line. Platforms accumulate, while products eventually disappear. Patience is a strategy. Wang Ning spent five years building a struggling retail chain before finally finding a breakthrough. He likened Pop Mart to “a deeply rooted, tree-like enterprise.” Trees grow slowly, but they last longer than anything else. The bottom line Wang Ning didn’t disrupt an industry; he created a new one entirely. He seamlessly blended art, commerce, and consumer psychology to create an unprecedented product experience, pioneering a category that didn’t exist before Pop Mart — one in which emotional collectibles function as a form of global cultural currency. His story reminds us that the most powerful companies are often not built on market demand but on the market’s unrealized need for its own needs. The true meaning of blind boxes lies not in the toys inside but in the joy of discovery. Ashley Dudarenok is a Chinese entrepreneur, author, and media personality, recognized by Thinkers50 as a “guru on fast‑evolving trends in China.” She is the founder of ChoZan, a China‑focused research and digital transformation consultancy. Ashley and her team help multinationals learn from China through tailored China innovation tours, research, and boardroom briefings. She is a keynote speaker, author of three bestselling books, runs a popular newsletter, and shares her insights with a B2B community of over 500,000 China watchers across LinkedIn and YouTube. Her latest endeavor is The Hidden Switch, a show spotlighting billion‑dollar founders from emerging countries who are reshaping the world.

Wang Ning: The man who turned toys into $25B

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Wang Ning: The man who turned toys into $25B

How Bottega Veneta weaved China’s forever it bag