Based in Beijing, this chain of stores, known by the collectible figures of different characters he sells, is part of the growing range of Chinese cultural products successfully beyond its borders.
The Labubu They have become in recent weeks in ambassadors of the China More attractive, even in regions where the majority opinion towards the Asian giant is negative as North America and Western Europe.
The dolls are “a bit rare, ugly, but very inclusive because people identify” with them, affirm AFP Lucy Shitova, an interior designer in a Pop Mart de London store.
For fear of customer agglomeration in front of their stores, now the Labubu They are sold only online. Contrary to Japan and South Korearecognized in the world for his cinema, his fashion and his music, China barely exports its cultural products, often slowed by the censorship imposed by the Communist Party.
Nor do fashion companies place their brands in the high -end market, weighed by the prejudice of poor quality associated with the “Made in China.”
“It is difficult for consumers in the world to perceive China as a brand -creating nation,” says Fan Yang, a professor at the University of Maryland in the United States.
The Tiktok effect
Pop mart He managed to overcome stereotypes and is now even a victim of falsifications. Also in recent years, high-end brands such as Shushu/Tong of “Prêt-A-Porter” or Songmont of bags were made hollow in the international market.
“It’s just a matter of time before other Chinese brands are recognizable worldwide,” Yang considers. Thanks to viral successes such as Las Labubu, “the products and the image (of China) gain attractive among the young western,” says Allison Malmsten, an analyst at the Daxue Consulting Cabinet.
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If social networks help, the image of the Chinese giant could positively evolve as happened with “Japan between 1980 and 2010 with the Pokémon and the Nintendo,” he predicts.
Before Labubu, the Tiktok application, conceived by the Chinese firm Bytedance, had opened the way by becoming the first almost indispensable Chinese product for world youth.
The platform “probably contributed to changing the perception of consumers to China,” says Joshua Kurlantzick, an expert from the American Reflection Center Council on Foreign Relations.
Tiktok claims to have more than 1,000 million users in the world, including almost half of the population of the United States.
In the White House viewfinder, concerned about national security, the application was almost prohibited in the United States, which led many of its users in that country to Rednote, another Chinese platform that welcomed these “digital refugees” with open arms.
Labubumanía
In Tiktok there are more than 1.7 million videos about Labubu dolls. This network has become an important dissemination vector of trends from China.
All these cultural products can “improve the image of China as a country capable of producing attractive goods and services worldwide,” says Kurlantzick. In parallel, the wear of the United States image under the presidency of Donald Trump may also benefit the Asian giant, estimates Fan Yang.
“The link that many establish between the apparent decline of American white power and the image improvement of China reflects to what extent they are intertwined in the minds of the people,” he says.
In the case of Labubu, their success is awakening a growing interest in China among the youngest.
In a small Pop attraction park in Beijing, an 11 -year -old Catarí, Maryam Hammadi, posed with his family this week before a statue of these dolls.
“In my country, everyone loves Labubu,” he told AFP.
What is the Labubu doll?
According to the London BBC, Labubu is a fictional character and a brand. It is based on a character in the toys series The Monsters (the monsters), created by Kassing Lung, an artist from Hong Kong.
On the website that distributes Labubu they affirmed that it is “kind and always willing to help”, only that it often gets the opposite.
Source: AFP and Writing UH.
