The Trendy Grocery Store That Sold Everything and Nothing

Prologue: The Perfect Store

Wang Ning had a vision for the perfect store. It was the early 2010s, and he had just graduated from university. He was a fan of the trendy, curated retail stores in Hong Kong and Japan, like Log-On, which were treasure troves of cool gadgets, unique stationery, and fashionable accessories. Mainland China, he realized, had nothing like it.

He envisioned a "trendy grocery store for young people," a place where you could buy everything from makeup and electronics to snacks and toys. It would be a one-stop shop for the young, urban Chinese consumer.

With this vision in his mind, he scraped together his savings, got a small investment from his family, and in November 2010, opened the first Pop Mart in a high-end shopping mall in Beijing's Zhongguancun district. He was 23 years old, and he was sure he had a winning idea. He was about to learn just how wrong he was.

Act I: The Retail Nightmare

The first few years of Pop Mart were a slow-motion disaster. The store was beautifully designed, but the customers were not coming. The business model was fundamentally flawed.

Because the store sold such a wide variety of products, it was impossible to manage the inventory effectively. Some products would sell out, while others would gather dust on the shelves for months. The company's cash was constantly tied up in a mountain of unsold goods.

The brand had no clear identity. It was a store that sold everything, which meant it was known for nothing. A customer might buy a phone case one day but would have no reason to come back the next. There was no loyalty, no community, no hook.

The financial losses were staggering. The company was burning through cash, and employee morale was plummeting. At one point, all the staff at the original store quit, leaving Wang Ning with no choice but to work the cash register himself, seven days a week. Staring at the empty aisles, he had to confront a painful reality: his vision of the perfect store was a failure.

Act II: The Glimmer of Hope

In the midst of this struggle, Wang Ning, a meticulous and data-obsessed founder, began to pore over his sales reports, looking for any sign of life. He found one, in the most unexpected of places.

A small, niche product, a line of collectible Japanese figurines called Sonny Angel, was consistently selling out. What was remarkable was not just the volume of sales, but the passion of the customers. They would come back again and again, not just to buy one, but to collect the whole series. They would trade them with their friends and post pictures of their collections online.

The key to Sonny Angel's appeal was its sales mechanic: the "blind box." The figurines came in sealed, identical boxes. The customer never knew which character they were getting until they opened it. This element of surprise, combined with the thrill of collecting a full set, was incredibly addictive.

Wang Ning later recalled that in 2015, Sonny Angel alone was generating 30% of the company's total revenue, despite taking up a tiny fraction of the shelf space.

Epilogue: The Painful Pivot

The data was undeniable. Wang Ning had spent years trying to build a store that sold everything, but his customers were telling him they wanted just one thing: the thrill of the hunt, the joy of collecting these quirky little toys.

He made the most difficult and important decision of his entrepreneurial career. He decided to kill the dream that had started the company. He would pivot Pop Mart away from the "trendy grocery store" model and focus it entirely on this new and exciting world of "art toys."

It was a huge risk. He would have to get rid of 95% of his existing product lines and suppliers. He would have to transform his company's entire identity. But he knew it was the only path forward.

The early years of struggle had been a painful but invaluable education. He had learned what didn't work. And in the process, buried deep in his own sales data, he had stumbled upon a secret, a key that would unlock a billion-dollar empire. The trendy grocery store was dead. The art toy revolution was about to begin.