The Labubu craze is coming to Tysons Corner Center, where it will no doubt be greeted by avid collectors and befuddled observers alike.
Pop Mart, the Chinese toy company best known for its popular line of grinning, bunny-eared monster dolls, is planning to open a retail store at the mall, its second in the D.C. region following a launch in Pentagon City last November.
The company has already started making inroads at Tysons Corner Center, deploying a pair of its “Robo Shop” vending machines at the mall near Barnes & Noble and in the third-floor food court.
Now, a construction wall announcing that Pop Mart is “coming soon” has popped up around its future storefront on the mall’s first floor near GameStop and Wasabi. Though an opening isn’t imminent, it could come in time for Christmas shopping.
“This location is currently scheduled to open in Q4, and we will have more info to share closer to then,” Marco Negrete, a spokesperson for Pop Mart Americas, told FFXnow by email.
Based in Beijing, where it was founded in 2010, Pop Mart now boasts more than 500 stores and 2,300 Robo Shops across 30 countries, along with a toy exhibition that started in 2017 and a theme park established in 2023, according to its U.S. website.
It made its U.S. debut with a pop-up in Costa Mesa, Calif., in 2022 before opening its first permanent store at American Dream in East Rutherford, New Jersey, in September 2023.
Pop Mart sells toys and other collectible items designed by artists from around the world. In addition to creating its own characters, it has partnerships with Disney, Marvel, Sanrio and other companies that allow it to sell Baby Yoda or Hello Kitty figures, for example.
However, Labubu has emerged as the company’s headliner, gaining international traction since 2024 through social media trends and sightings of the doll dangling from celebrity handbags. The line’s popularity has also grabbed the attention of Chinese authorities, who have been cracking down on knockoffs, and put some investors on edge, the Associated Press reported last week.
Pop Mart saw its Hong Kong shares sink nearly 23% last Wednesday (March 25) despite reporting the equivalent of $5.4 billion in annual revenue for 2025, an 185% increase from the previous year.
Pop Mart’s reliance on Labubu, said Jeff Zhang, an equity analyst at Morningstar, is likely part of the reason for Wednesday’s share price fall. Pop Mart’s shares are still up 33% over the past year despite the investor sell-off.
“We think the market’s biggest concern still lies in the earnings growth prospect,” Zhang said, although he added that the Labubu frenzy is likely “yet to cease.” Roughly 38% of Pop Mart’s revenue came from its “The Monsters” proprietary intellectual property characters, which includes Labubu.
“Labubu’s popularity has been a huge success,” said Gary Ng, a senior economist at French bank Natixis. “However, there is an emerging concern that there is no second growth driver.”
If growth momentum of Labubu and its relevant products stall, it could become a “concentration risk” that would drag on sentiment, Ng said. Pop Mart’s other characters include Molly and Skullpanda.
Wang Ning, CEO of Pop Mart, sought to ease investor worries on growth prospects during an earnings conference on Wednesday.
“People have expressed worries when talking about Labubu,” Wang said, “[About] whether it might just be a craze, and if it would be experiencing huge fluctuations.”
“However, based on our observations, we are pleased to see that it is becoming a lifestyle for more and more people,” he said. “We have strong expectations and confidence for [its] future.”
Pop Mart also has a theme park in Beijing, and just last week, the company confirmed it is partnering with Sony Pictures Entertainment on a new movie featuring Labubu.
It has also been expanding its global reach and production capabilities, and has manufacturing partners in countries such as Cambodia, Indonesia and Mexico, on top of China, the company said earlier.
