Mark Ritson, now a grizzled Labubu hunter, has observed a cooling interest in demand for these collectibles. He offers some strategy pointers the brand would be mad to turn down.
First, survive the bonkers amount of jet lag flying from New York to Singapore.
Second, deliver the goods for the giant FMCG company that had flown me there.
And third, find two very specific Labubu dolls for a very specific nine-year-old.
Emerging from the sketchbook of Hong Kong-born, Netherlands-raised artist Kasing Lung, Labubu dolls are a fusion of Nordic fairy tales and Asian cartoon artistry. It was Pop Mart, the Chinese toy giant, that transformed Labubu into a commercial phenomenon in 2019, rolling the toys out across Asia and later the globe in blind-box formats. This irresistible blend of myth and modern merchandising fuelled a fever among collectors and, later, intimidating nine-year-olds.
Pop Mart’s masterstroke was to juxtapose scarcity with celebrity. Limited releases, blind-box excitement, and associations with the likes of Lisa from Blackpink and David Beckham drove Labubu prices to dizzying heights on secondary markets. Searches and sales spiked throughout Asia, the US, and Europe, with some dolls fetching £1,000 or more. In the first half of 2025, Labubu accounted for more than a third of all Pop Mart revenue, generating an astonishing half a billion pounds in just six months.
With my jet lag vanquished and a happy client behind me, the real mission was yet to begin. I had given myself four hours to hit the Pop Marts of Singapore (all nine of them), plus a host of secondary sellers as backup.
Precisely 11 minutes later, both Labubu dolls were grinning inanely from my bag, and I was working out how many hours of reflexology and heavy drinking I could fit into the gaping opportunity of a free Friday afternoon in Singapore compared with previous adventures where I had returned with the wrong Labubu (Tokyo), a fake Labubu (New York City) or no Labubu (London), this was a cakewalk.
It had happened in a flash. On the way to the first Pop Mart, I’d passed a small, innocuous toy shop. When I showed the bored owner the photos of the desired models, he barely looked up from his noodles and signalled to a giant glass display case at the back of the store. There, in their hundreds, was every creed and colour of Labubu imaginable. They’d been pre-opened and coded, so you knew what you were getting. And the prices were only $5 above the Singaporean RRP of $40.
Of course, you’re now thinking what I was thinking as I looked at hundreds of furry, grinning faces: Labubu is Lathroughthrough. In a development as old as marketing itself, the product has passed its apex just as the company producing it is ramping up. Pop Mart produced 30m dolls in October, a tenfold increase on earlier demand-driven months. Meanwhile, Google Trends confirms that on an innocuous day over the summer, we reached, then passed, peak Labubu. And it’s been downhill ever since. The surfeit in production and decline in demand is becoming ever more apparent. All the black market players have become grey market sellers. Resale prices have dropped from astonishing mark-ups to prices often lower than the original retail price. The end is very fucking nigh.
We have been here before.
We could call it Cabbage Patch Dolls syndrome. Or the Von Dutch effect. How about Logan Paul’s Prime decline? Or Levi’s disease. The minute Nick Kamen slipped off those blue wonders in that faux-50s laundrette, we were witnessing both the peak of Levi’s demand and the start of its downfall. All too often, the tragic reality of brand growth is that the peak is also the start of the trough.
And that prompts an important marketing question:
Want to go deeper? Ask The Drum
What should Labubu do-do?
Option one is already impossible for Labubu: reduce production and fan the flames of demand into some form of permanent market obsession. This was the original playbook of most nascent luxury brands. Despite experiencing its own Labubu-like surge in attention and desire in centuries past, most could not ramp up production because the supply of suitable land, raw materials and artisans made such things impossible.
The long waiting lists of Louis Vuitton or the apology of Father Pierre Pérignon to Louis XIV for not being able to send him any booze for his parties aren’t just mythical moments in the history of these great brands. They are exemplars of how short-term supply restrictions guaranteed long-term fortunes. Modern luxury brands like Rolex and Hermès follow a similar restrictive approach to production these days, despite manufacturing constraints being significantly less restrictive. Ferrari famously estimates the demand for its latest model and then makes exactly one less. There is marketing method in this defeatist manufacturing ideology.
Option two is more fatalistic. Expect products and brands that rise on the whimsical tide of fashion to then fall. And after that fall, become an expert in revitalising the brand and restoring demand. It’s easy to forget that current branding behemoths like Lego, Burberry and even Apple once surged and then fell away only to be resurrected to ten-fold levels of their original desirability
There are striking current examples to suggest this phoenix-like approach can work wonders. I have never seen a better brand return than the one being marshalled by Fran Horowitz over at Abercrombie & Fitch. After the ridiculous, kinky highs of the noughties and scandal-hit fall from grace during the 2010s, the brand is staging a dazzling comeback. Last year saw revenues rise to $4.95bn, beyond anything it achieved during its glory years. In addition to no longer resembling a brand catering solely to homo-erotic frat boys, Horowitz implemented other changes, including streamlining operations, closing underperforming stores, and leveraging influencer-driven digital marketing.
She’s reinvigorated the brand. And she’s a long way from being done yet.
Brands like Labubu can rebound. But as the earlier Levi’s example illustrates, it’s a dangerous game to play.
Option three is probably the most applicable to Labubu once it works out that it is losing, not winning, the demand war. Although its trajectory is very much a declining one, reaching out to other brands through co-branding could re-inject life, demand and a new cycle of sales.
When the once uber-cool skate shop Supreme became too big and too popular for its own good and started its own slippery decline, it was smart enough to turn to co-branding to arrest the slide and grow demand. The company had always organically partnered with brands throughout its history, but starting with Louis Vuitton and moving on to big players like Nike and North Face, Supreme has weaponised co-branding as a scarcity amplifier and cultural legitimacy tool. Each drop is a limited-edition event that activates both the original audience and the collaborator’s followers, creating FOMO-driven buying frenzies and secondary market premiums.
More strategically, these partnerships serve as constant validation of Supreme’s cultural centrality. When a major luxury brand or coveted designer aligns with Supreme, it reinforces the brand’s position as an arbiter of taste rather than merely a streetwear vendor. The brand doesn’t co-brand to increase unit sales; it co-brands to maintain the perception that Supreme products are scarce, desirable commodities worth queuing for or paying resale mark-ups on. Supreme’s genius is understanding that co-branding works as demand maintenance precisely because the brand remains selective and unapproachable enough to make each collaboration feel like an earned privilege rather than a commercial transaction.
It’s clear that the initial glorious era of Labubu is over. By Christmas, it will become clear that no one wants the dolls any more, and a massive bout of discounting will begin. Pop Mart will need to step back and review its options. And it will learn, like countless brands before it, that while the creation of initial white-hot market demand is something to celebrate, its maintenance beyond the usual cycle of things is a skill only the very finest marketing minds can manage.
My nine-year-old wants it “on record” that she vehemently disagrees with this diagnosis.