Theme Park Scene Gathering Popular IPs
A Lively and Eye-Catching Performance
The MINISO IP theme park's flagship store is located at the U749 corner of Nanjing Road Pedestrian Street, occupying a space of over 2000 square meters. The three-story flagship store features a playground theme on the first floor, a colorful daily space on the second floor, and a plush home style on the third floor. Color art runs through the design inspiration, creating different styles based on the types and positioning of the products sold.
The first floor features a playground theme design, with large floor-to-ceiling windows on the street side for unobstructed views, consistent with the playful exterior. To manage traffic flow, dedicated entrances are located on both sides of the first floor, creating a circular flow across the entire space.
This floor mainly displays plush toys, a small number of bags, and a very small number of snacks from retail brand co-branded IPs. Most of the display cabinets are designed with inspiration from playground facilities, including a large hammer, Ferris wheel, and parade floats. Interactive equipment will also be added. After the official opening, the plush toy display cabinets in the shape of claw machines are expected to be upgraded to become part of the interactive experience, creating a more immersive playground experience for customers.
Signboards with colorful light strips hang from the mirrored ceiling, with plush toys categorized by IP and displayed on various playground facilities. The overall space is vibrant, but the product categorization and display cabinet arrangement create a harmonious unity, maximizing the playground atmosphere while maintaining the orderliness of the store design.
Compared to the lively presentation of the first floor, the second floor is more in line with the positioning of a daily necessities store, with a more rational and organized use of color. Stepping onto the second floor via a pink staircase, you'll find a relatively small BLACKPINK co-branded display cabinet at the entrance, with pink and black color schemes and cute and cool pillows, albums, keychains, and other peripheral products attracting many KPOP fans.
The left area is a two-dimensional theme area, with life-size standees of popular IPs such as "Spy x Family" and "Jujutsu Kaisen" in the middle. Blind boxes, badges, tote bags, and keychains are neatly arranged on the shelves. IPs range from otome games to Japanese animation. New Commercial Home observed that MINISO's two-dimensional co-branded products are relatively comparable in price to similar products on the market, or even more affordable. With its large quantity and low price advantage, it has successfully attracted many users on Nanjing Road Pedestrian Street, an area with a high concentration of two-dimensional culture.
Exploring further into the space to the left of the staircase, a green space is neatly filled with cosmetics, skincare products, and toiletries, with prices ranging from tens to hundreds of yuan, mostly affordable domestic brands. To the left is a pink shoe and sock area, with "Lilo & Stitch" IP plush slippers and Strawberry Bear co-branded wool socks being among the most popular fashion items, priced between 20 and 30 yuan. Following the indoor flow, you'll pass through a golden plush clothing and hat area and a blue plush keychain sales area, arriving at the staircase leading to the third floor.
The staircase from the second to the third floor is relatively narrow and difficult to navigate, and the third floor has insufficient ceiling height, although the mirrored ceiling visually expands the height of the space. Unlike the flashy first floor and the orderly second floor, the third floor features a warm and comfortable plush home style. All the display stands are designed as plush furniture, with colorful pianos, sofas, and cribs filled with plush toys from different IPs. There are also pink plush dressing tables and a large pink chandelier adorned with Disney toys, offering visitors interesting art installations to check in.
The right area is a pink and green fragrance area, with flower-shaped chandeliers and petal-shaped side display stands making the area look like a fairy's house from an animation. This area features all of MINISO's brand fragrances and offers customers fragrance testing services. Most fragrances are priced under 100 yuan. The space is mainly divided into two relatively wide aisles, with separate checkout counters at the end to streamline the checkout process, which is commendable in terms of order maintenance.
Upgrading the Brand Showcase Window
Delivering Emotional Value and Brand Culture
In 2013, brand founder Ye Guofu founded MINISO, a "global IP joint-name collection store." Co-branded products with various IPs have been one of MINISO's core brand strategies for many years.
Since last year, MINISO has been continuously exploring a new path of "super IP" + "super store." According to MINISO Group's 2024 second quarter and first-half performance report, the growth in total brand revenue in the first half of 2024 was mainly due to an 18.8% year-on-year increase in the average number of stores and same-store sales growth. Overseas market revenue growth far exceeded that of the Chinese mainland market, reaching 42.6%. At the same time, the brand plans to repurchase no more than HK$2 billion in ordinary shares or American depositary shares within 12 months.
As of now, MINISO Group has more than 7,000 stores globally, with record-breaking revenue and net profit. In the first half of the year, the number of newly added stores in overseas markets and TOP TOY stores reached 266 and 47 respectively, with offline touchpoints covering countries such as the United States, Britain, France, and Indonesia.
In addition to adding new stores, MINISO's IP co-branding capabilities are also recognized as industry-leading. Currently, the brand has collaborated deeply with more than 80 well-known IPs such as Disney, Hello Kitty, Snoopy, and Marvel, launching affordable and exquisite co-branded peripherals and content-rich themed activities. This is one of the main reasons for MINISO's strong and sustained growth over the past decade.
Speaking of IP marketing, one cannot help but mention Pop Mart. Having also moved its large flagship store into Nanjing Road Pedestrian Street, as one of the earliest companies in mainland China to develop trendy toy culture and the trendy toy industry, Pop Mart integrates IP operation, product development and IP licensing, theme parks and experiential and interactive content. Compared to frequent collaborations with popular IPs, Pop Mart is more adept at incubating and creating its own IPs. Through the acquisition of IP intellectual property rights and the creation of internal design teams, it has currently established ten self-operated IPs. Among them, the most representative, Molly, achieved sales of 780 million RMB in the first half of 2024, accounting for 10%.
In terms of scenario marketing, Pop Mart has also actively launched a series of exploratory actions. As early as last September, Pop Mart built an immersive IP theme park covering approximately 40,000 square meters in Beijing Chaoyang Park, successfully achieving a total revenue of 6.3 billion yuan in 2023. Taking advantage of urban renewal as an opportunity, it has carried out deeper IP integration and scenario penetration, allowing IP marketing combined with scenario marketing to not only break through the static image of the IP, but also enhance the emotional connection and offline interaction between a wide range of brand IP enthusiasts and dynamic IPs.
Maintaining the ability to develop and operate its own IPs, and developing market benefits through the brand's own operations and market promotion capabilities, can effectively avoid falling into homogenized competition and form a business barrier. The lack of development and creation of self-operated IPs is also a major shortcoming in the process of MINISO's expansion of its business territory.
Self-operated IPs focus more on the brand's own construction and operation, while co-branded IPs focus more on cooperation and resource integration with other brands. The choice of which method depends on the brand's actual situation and cooperation objectives. Speaking of IP joint marketing, MINISO has always been favored by brands for its "affordable and easy-to-use" products. By understanding the needs of consumers, the brand collaborates with well-known IPs to create new content to attract and engage IP audiences, and uses more novel content to deepen connections with existing consumers.
In terms of customer operation, compared to simple online and offline marketing activities, IP co-branding activities can empower brands at a lower cost, using the IP's inherent traffic to bind with the brand, increasing brand exposure, and expanding the target customer base to the vast number of IP enthusiasts. From KPOP to the second dimension, from Barbie to Cinnamoroll, from Disney to My Little Pony, MINISO brings together multiple fan groups, and the interactive space built in its flagship store also provides an immersive social scene for the creation of internal user connections.
In product research and development, frequent updates ensure the richness of product content. MINISO spans multiple fields, bringing together popular IPs. In this flagship store, it combines the needs of IP enthusiasts to create scenes and launch a large number of IP peripherals and supporting products, with product innovation directly feeding back into the retail scene.
The brand expands its brand potential through refined operations and in-depth IP mining, extracting elements that match the brand's tone. One of the most representative co-branding activities is the cooperation between MINISO and Barbie. Synchronized with the release of the Barbie movie, it explores the creation of a more three-dimensional and fashionable brand image while connecting with international hotspots.
