The entrepreneur who became a billionaire by selling dolls in vending machines.

Born in Henan province, Wang graduated from Zhengzhou University with a degree in advertising in 2009. Not much is known about his background before Popmart, except that he worked for a year for Sina Corporation, the digital media company that owns Weibo (China’s Twitter clone). 
Wang quickly felt the desire to create his own company. On a trip in Hong Kong, he noted a popular shops chain : LOG-ON, which offered a mix of toys, cosmetics and stationery that it planned to bring to the continent.

In 2010, he gathered some friends from the university, convincing them to put their economies in common and open the first Pop Mart shop in a commercial center near the Zhongguancun district of Beijing.

The center regroups technology companies and is often considered as the Chinese Silicon Valley. In the beginning, he also sold a few types of differents products, similar to those of LOG-ON, from differents brands. But quickly, he is confronted with problems as inventory management, staffing, customer service, and struggled to break even. Only one type of Pop Mart product is a reel success : figurines.
«At that time, toys were our best-selling category,» he says.
In 2014, he enrolled in the Guanghua School of Management at Peking University and met a cohort of like-minded peers - some of whom later joined the Pop Mart management team. For maintain rentability, Pop Mart reduced its product range and decided to only sell toys.

The entrepreneur is inspire by another source: gashapon automatic distributors in Japan.

These gashapon (appeared in the 80s) distribute toys randomly in small transparent boxes. Wang liked the surprise effect but wanted to sell its products in premium packagings. 
Wang innovated by asking artists to create figurines for him. Among the most prominent of these was Hong Kong’s Kenny Wong, who designed a large-eyed, round-faced doll called Molly. With Wong and Molly on board from 2016, Pop Mart’s sales began to accelerate, reaching $22Ms in 2017 and then $73M a year later. A total of 25 artists had contributed to the Pop Mart toy lines. Each artist received a share of the sales their work generates. 
The company quickly expanded to about 10 different lines of figures including the Dimoos line, aliens with candyfloss hair puffs, or Labubus, rabbit-like creatures with pastel-coloured fur and a set of monster teeth. Most come in blind boxes and sell for around $9.

And that’s Pop Mart’s huge commercial promise.

The main customer target is not children but millenials, who are interested in the mystery effect and the rarity of certain figurines. Pop Mart succeeds in building loyalty: almost half of the consumers make a second purchase. The figurines sell for several hundred dollars on the black market.
Wang also makes a point of letting his artists’ imaginations run wild. However, the leader is finely tuned to the other details of his business. He is known to be obsessed with everything from the correct height of a display table in a PopMart shop to the power of the lights. 

Finally, in 2020, Wang managed Pop Mart’s IPO with a fundraising of over $146 M.

He has adapted his strategy in the wake of the pandemic, with a third of sales coming from e-commerce. Wang successfully negotiates licenses with Universal Studio and Disney. Wang plans to expand the brand internationally.
Wang lives in Beijing with his wife. He owns 46% of the shares in Pop Mart.