38B Guangzhou boss, betting on trendy toy business

Author: Li Huilin Editor: Tan Lu Image source: Miniso

Now, Ye Guofu’s public statements are always about IP.

“A good IP, especially recent co-branded IP products, has a significant impact on revenue.” This Miniso chairman is optimistic about the IP business.

At the end of March, Miniso Group announced its performance, with revenue of 21.44B yuan in 2025, a year-on-year increase of 26.19%. He revealed that categories like blind boxes, figurines, and soft rubber plush toys have an annual sales of 5 billion yuan.

Ye Guofu

At the beginning of the year, he announced a new round of transformation, shifting from a retail company to a cultural company, becoming a leading global IP operation platform. Ye’s trendy toy brand TOP TOY also recently updated its prospectus, planning to list independently in Hong Kong.

Starting from a 10-yuan grocery store on the street, Miniso is now targeting Pop Mart, opening a new front in the trendy toy market.

However, the toy track has become a red ocean, with each company competing for the same group of designers, the same type of IP licensing, and the same consumers.

For Ye Guofu, he especially lacks exclusive blockbuster IPs. The heavily supported YOYO is doing well, but its sustainability remains to be seen.

Replacing the Cage and Changing the Birds

Ye Guofu, with a net worth of 38 billion yuan, has tasted the sweetness of the IP business.

By the end of 2025, Miniso had partnered with up to 180 international IPs, such as Disney, Sanrio, and Harry Potter.

After obtaining IP licenses, he quickly transformed them into products using his company’s R&D and supply chain capabilities. These high-margin “emotional hard currencies” have sales capabilities far surpassing traditional retail.

Take the “Zootopia 2” series as an example. The movie was released last November, and its co-branded products brought nearly 1 billion yuan in global sales for Miniso.

At MINISO LAND (City Park Store) in Shanghai Nanjing East Road, the proportion of IP products exceeds 80%. In 15 months since opening, sales reached 200 million yuan.

Ye Guofu expects that the annual sales of this store could remain stable above 200 million yuan.

In Miniso’s GMV, trendy toy products currently account for a small proportion, but they have high unit prices and high profits. By 2025, the group’s gross profit margin will increase to 45%, up 17 percentage points from five years ago, with gross profit reaching 9.65 billion yuan.

In interviews with media such as “21CBR,” Miniso Group Vice President Liu Xiaobin stated that the IP consumption penetration rate among Chinese consumers is about 53%–56%. In comparison, Japan’s market size is about 11 times that of China, and the US is more than 50 times.

To seize this structural opportunity, in 2025, Ye Guofu will elevate the “IP strategy” to a group-level strategy and upgrade channels with a “big store strategy” for amusement park-type stores.

These stores mainly include MINISO SPACE, MINISO LAND, MINISO FRIENDS, etc., with areas over 400 square meters, and IP products accounting for over 80%.

“Now, everyone doesn’t lack products; what they lack are good experiences and scene check-ins.”

Ye Guofu said that store upgrades can provide better display and conversion scenarios for IP products.

By 2025, Miniso will upgrade about 290 stores, with the sales of new stores increasing by an average of 40%–50%.

By the end of 2025, Miniso will have over 8,100 stores worldwide, with 26 amusement park-style stores opened. Ye Guofu announced that in the next five years, 80% of stores will be closed and reopened to achieve a cage replacement.

This year, Ye Guofu plans to add 510–550 new stores globally, including 120 new stores in China, mostly large stores.

Spinning Off and Planting

Ye Guofu also has a significant move in the trendy toy industry: TOP TOY.

This is an internal incubation project of Miniso. Its first store opened in 2020, coinciding with Pop Mart’s listing the day after.

Ye set up an independent management team for TOP TOY. Founder Sun Yuanwen was previously Miniso’s operations director. Ye Guofu, as the actual controller, holds 63.5% of TOP TOY’s shares.

Miniso’s amusement park-style stores overlap with TOP TOY products, but Ye’s vision sees a difference in positioning.

Miniso told “21CBR” that the amusement park stores are positioned as “public-level IP experience destinations,” covering all age groups, with IP products including plush toys, home goods, cosmetics, and others, with trendy toys being just a part.

TOP TOY’s products focus on core trendy toys, targeting core enthusiasts, collectors, and deep-interest Z-generation users. Its figurine products account for half of its revenue.

After completing strategic financing led by Temasek in 2025, TOP TOY’s valuation is about 10 billion Hong Kong dollars, and it submitted its listing prospectus in September.

By the end of 2025, TOP TOY had opened 334 stores worldwide, earning 3.49B yuan in a year.

Unlike Pop Mart, which mainly develops its own IP, TOP TOY mainly does secondary creation of large IPs.

Most of TOP TOY’s products are sourced from external brands, with this part of revenue accounting for half of its total in 2025, involving over 660 IPs.

TOP TOY’s growth relies on Miniso’s extensive offline channels, which are its largest clients, contributing 46.6% of its revenue in 2025.

After submitting its listing application, the boundaries between the two are gradually clarified.

Since late August 2025, the R&D of trendy toy products has been unified under TOP TOY. Miniso has authorized TOP TOY to develop trendy toys based on its own IPs “Penpen” and “Dundun,” and charges licensing fees based on sales.

TOP TOY’s prospectus estimates that Miniso’s revenue contribution will continue to decline, falling below 40% by 2028.

Focusing on Self-Operated IP

The trendy toy business heavily depends on external IPs, and Ye Guofu has paid substantial licensing fees.

In the past three years, Miniso’s IP licensing fees increased from 249 million yuan to 600 million yuan, eating into profits.

“Co-branded IP is like working for others; owning IP is proof that a company is moving up the value chain.” In Ye Guofu’s view, a combination of third-party and self-owned IPs is a golden path.

“International IPs have content and explosive power; self-owned IPs have scarcity, and can leverage higher user stickiness, stronger pricing power, and lower licensing costs to contribute higher gross margins.”

Ye is determined to develop self-owned IPs, claiming he is willing to “waste” 100 million yuan for trial and error. His goal is for self-owned and international IPs to eventually each account for half.

Ye Guofu’s team has developed a methodology, incubating 30 self-owned IPs such as Penguin Fatty, DunDUN Chicken, and Gifford Bear.

Liu Xiaobin told “21CBR” that frontline copyright business colleagues and buyers have intuition and feel. The team also captures data on IPs with high social media buzz and active discussions among private domain users, then combines internal trial sales mechanisms.

“Through collaborations with others’ IPs, we’ve developed the ability to turn IP resources into products.” Ye Guofu said they have built a full-chain loop from front-end creativity to back-end supply chain and all-channel distribution, enabling quick responses to user needs.

By March 2026, they had signed 18 trendy toy artist IPs, some of which have been commercialized, with the most successful self-owned IP being YOYO.

From January to March 2026, YOYO-related products sold 165 million yuan, with global sales expected to exceed 1 billion yuan this year. Besides trendy toys, they also plan to develop YOYO humanoid robots.

“We currently have 30–40 self-owned IPs in reserve.” Ye Guofu said 2026 will be the year for the elevation of his original IPs, learning from Pop Mart, collaborating with top celebrities, and promoting self-owned IPs.

TOP TOY also continues this approach, owning over 20 self-owned IPs, with “Nommi Nuomi” surpassing 200 million yuan in annual sales, and expecting sales to double in 2026. Sun Yuanwen set a goal that in the future, self-operated and externally sourced products will be roughly 70/30.

Ye Guofu’s ideals are beautiful, but the revenue share of self-owned IPs is still very small. Moreover, internal incubation requires long-term investment, and the costs of signing artists and creating blockbuster products for trial and error are high.

However, he has no better options.

Traditional street and grocery store models face impacts from e-commerce and homogenization, making valuation less promising. In 2024, Miniso’s same-store sales in China declined year-on-year.

From “selling goods” to “selling IP,” this long-term transformation has just begun.