Photo/Li Lei (NBD)

Apr. 30 (NBD) -- Chinese designer toy retailer Pop Mart has concluded a new round of financing worth over 100 million U.S. dollars, and is considering an initial public offering in Hong Kong as soon as next month, tech media 36Kr reported.

The financing round is led by investment bank China Renaissance and private equity firm Loyal Valley Capital, according to the news.

Pop Mart and China Renaissance declined to comment on questions about the funding and IPO plan when reached by National Business Daily.

Founded in 2010, Pop Mart offers toys collaborated with designers and artists, as well as authorized toys from the likes of Disney and Universal. Pop Mart has 100 direct-sale stores in 52 cities in China as of July 2019. 

One of the company's best-selling toy series is "MOLLY", a blonde girl created by designer Kenny from Hong Kong, China. It is reported that Pop Mart sold 4 million MOLLY toys in 2018 via "blind boxes", which refers to the packaging that makes buyers unable to know which specific design they would get until they open the boxes. 

The company became widely known after the blind box craze in 2019, when many young Chinese consumers spent generously on these boxes to get a full collection or rare designs of toy series. 

According to a 2019 report by Guotai Junan Securities, on Alibaba Group's e-commerce site Tmall alone, nearly 200,000 consumers spent over 20,000 yuan (2,834.0 U.S. dollars) every year on blind boxes. Most of the buyers were born after 1995. While in 2018, there were 300,000 buyers trading their black box-packed toys on online second hand market Xianyu, and the prices of the most sought-after designs could go 39 times higher.

However, as the report pointed out, the industry needs to find a way to retain growth after the blind box trend dies down.

In a dialogue with chairman of China Renaissance Bao Fan last week, founder and CEO of Pop Mart Wang Ning said the key is to develop and monetize more intellectual property designs, citing Disney as an example.

Email: gaohan@nbd.com.cn