Got headhunted this week. First time in a long time anyone’s tried to pull me somewhere else, and I won’t pretend it wasn’t flattering. When you’ve spent years building your own thing, you stop expecting the phone to ring like that. It rang anyway.
The role was in Hong Kong. Good offer, wrong city. My life is built in Thailand now, and that’s not up for negotiation. No hard feelings, just not where I’m going.
A different kind of story landed the same week, and it’s stuck with me more than the headhunting call has. Pop Mart released its H1 results, and half the industry commentary is reading it as “Labubu is over.”
Wrong take. Yes, the resale market has cooled hard. The “Big Into Energy” blind box is down over 80% from last year’s peak, and some unopened boxes are selling below retail on Tmall. If you only watch resale prices, that looks like a company in freefall.
Look at the actual results and it’s a different picture entirely. Revenue up 23.8% to 17.17 billion yuan (US$2.5 billion). China revenue up 47.3%. Membership past 82 million people, generating almost 93% of sales. Gross margin still sitting at 69.7%. This isn’t a company losing its grip on the category it built. It’s a company that decided to manage the hype itself rather than let scalpers dictate it, scaling Labubu production to 50 million units a month and rolling out robot vending machines to route buyers back to retail instead of resale apps.
And then there’s the real tell: a share buyback worth up to 5 billion yuan (US$740 million). Companies don’t put three-quarters of a billion dollars behind their own stock because they think the party’s over. They do it because they know exactly how strong the business is underneath the headlines.
I read that as a company reminding the market who’s actually in control of the narrative. Which, funnily enough, is the same instinct behind turning down a move I didn’t want to make.
This is exactly why we’re in the collectible space, and staying in it. Four brands right now, Momo, Dragon Kingdom, Lucky Emma, Angel Toy, and a fifth coming with some genuinely exciting worldwide licences attached. Watch this space.
