Wang Ning wants the crazy Bubble Mart to "return to the factory for repairs"

Ask AI · What Internal Changes Does Wang Ning’s F1 Racing Metaphor Imply?

Interface News reporter | Ma Yue

Interface News editor | Ya Hanxiang

“Like a rookie race car driver, we’re quickly pulled onto the F1 track. During the process—when you’re going at super high speeds—whether you’re the driver or the car itself, there’s an enormous amount of pressure. But of course, the whole process is精彩, and there are also many gains, experience, and lessons.” At the Bubble Mart 2025 annual performance briefing held on March 25, the company’s founder, Chairman of the Board, and CEO Wang Ning described the changes in his mindset over the past year.

This company, which provides emotional value through collectible figures and toys, has repeatedly been hit by swings in sentiment in the capital markets.

Bubble Mart achieved the best growth performance in its history in 2025: in 2025, Bubble Mart’s revenue reached 37.12 billion yuan, up 184.7%; this revenue also set a historical record, with the same period last year at 13.04B yuan. During the period, adjusted profit attributable to owners under non-IFRS was 13.08 billion yuan, up 284.5%.

However, on the day it released its annual report on March 25, Bubble Mart’s share price plunged by about 20%, closing at 168.3 Hong Kong dollars that day.

Over the past half year, after Bubble Mart’s share price reached a peak of 339.8 Hong Kong dollars, it then retreated amid repeated fluctuations. On the eve of the annual report release, Morgan Stanley commented that Bubble Mart’s share price might first rise and then enter a range-bound period of trading, because market views were highly divergent—there was a big split between bulls and bears, but profit expectations did not change.

In reality, Bubble Mart’s soaring performance alongside a falling share price reflects a number of short-term market sentiments, such as a valuation pullback, profit-taking by capital, and concerns about the global macro situation, among others.

Interface News noted that at the Bubble Mart 2025 annual performance briefing, including Wang Ning, management appeared relatively restrained and cautious.

They had repeatedly stated that “last year’s surge was unexpected,” and Wang Ning also repeatedly emphasized the desire to maintain linear and healthy growth. With the high base as a premise, Bubble Mart’s 2025 performance far exceeded the company’s revenue guidance of 30 billion yuan at the time of last year’s mid-year report, and this has also led Wang Ning to give a relatively conservative growth outlook—striving to achieve no less than 20% growth in 2026.

And this seemingly creates a sentiment gap compared with the growth of several times over in the past two years, where growth in 2026 may fall short of expectations, further impacting the share price.

Sanrio collaboration series LABUBU photo: Interface News | Ma Yue

But the sharp drop in the share price also offers an opportunity to reexamine Bubble Mart’s fundamentals.

“As a group, we’re not pursuing an all-out sprint—we don’t just focus on how fast we can go right now, or how fast we’ve been going over the past few years. We still hope to look at each year’s development and opportunities with a long-term strategic perspective.” Wang Ning also said at the performance briefing that as a young company entering its 16th year, Bubble Mart still has many lessons to learn.

Wang Ning said, “Like F1, we hope that in 2026 we’ll be going into the pit stop—an opportunity to refuel, change tires. After developing at an ultra-high speed, we hope to take a breather and make adjustments.”

One key point is that Bubble Mart has repeatedly mentioned the need to continuously “build internal strength” through improvements in its organizational structure.

“We said last year, ‘a sunny day to repair the roof.’ Although we achieved such great results, everyone shouldn’t be complacent—we need to think more about the problems we have.” Wang Ning said this.

In 2025, Bubble Mart set up offices in 21 countries and regions globally and had more than 11,000 employees. Of those, besides employees from China, the number is nearly 4,000.

In fact, globalization has also brought unprecedented challenges in organizational capacity and operations. For example, when overseas stores, the supply chain, and marketing teams are quickly set up, the complexity of local talent recruitment, retention, and cultural integration increases. With a team of tens of thousands, what Bubble Mart needs to be alert to is that during the entrepreneurial period, the agility, focus, and a culture of “NO is more than YES” is likely to be diluted.

This is also leading to a reassessment and reconfiguration of the organizational structure.

Interface News learned that a recent appointment has seen Wen De Yi take on the role of Chief Growth Officer.

He had his position adjusted in April last year. Together with Si De, he became co-COO (co-Chief Operating Officer), jointly responsible for managing and operating the group’s global business. Each has their own scope: Wen De Yi is responsible for the Asia-Pacific and Europe regions, while Si De is responsible for Greater China and the Americas. As a Korean executive who joined Bubble Mart in 2018, Wen De Yi is the “operator” who helped take Bubble Mart’s overseas business from “0 to 1” himself.

As for Wen De Yi’s appointment as Chief Growth Officer this time, beyond expanding overseas business, he may also be considering a more comprehensive approach to Bubble Mart’s overall brand—building a global growth logic.

In addition, Interface News also learned that Bubble Mart will allocate more senior management resources to a governance and management framework that integrates overseas and China markets in a more comprehensive way.

A person close to Bubble Mart told Interface News that in the future, Bubble Mart’s overseas market growth trajectory will gradually converge with that of China. “Bubble Mart’s systematic operating capabilities in the China market, its IP ecosystem matrix, and its user insights system are the core assets for global expansion,” the person said to Interface News.

Based on experience from the China market, there has not been a large-scale expansion of store size in the China region. Instead, the company has exercised restraint in opening stores, controlling store openings; more efforts have been focused on strengthening the team and reinforcing retail fundamentals, thereby achieving 135.2% revenue growth.

Star person photo: Interface News | Ma Yue

At the performance briefing, Qiyin Chu, President of Bubble Mart China, emphasized that in 2026, the number of Bubble Mart stores undergoing upgrade and renovation would be far greater than in 2025, and more flagship stores would be opened. She said that in 2025, the additional floor area from upgraded and renovated stores was not much—basically an increase of 30% to 40%, with some individual stores increasing by 50%. But the sales generated by these upgraded stores are nearly double the national average level.

With this strategy of upgrading key regions and commercial districts, opening big stores, and creating flagship stores as landmarks, it will also be applied to the future layout of overseas stores.

At the performance briefing, Chief Growth Officer Wen De Yi said that this year the company would focus on developing markets such as the Middle East, South Asia, Europe, and South America, and steadily expand its global operating footprint. Chief Operating Officer Si De also emphasized that as the United States is a key market, in 2026 Bubble Mart will exceed 100 stores. If the rollout proceeds smoothly, the two flagship stores in New York’s Times Square and on Fifth Avenue will both open in the fourth quarter of this year.

LABUBU photo: Interface News | Ma Yue

“The first quarter this year is a relatively slow season across the entire Europe and the U.S. market. Taking advantage of this time, we revisited our strategic goals with the whole team and did work on team building,” said Si De, Bubble Mart’s Chief Operating Officer, at the performance briefing. The U.S. omnichannel team has nearly 2,000 people in total, and they have also updated the offices at the U.S. headquarters.

In the future, beyond handling operations in North America, the U.S. office could incorporate more artist discovery and the production of derivative content. He said that under the trend of high-growth traffic slowing down this year, how to capture a large amount of traffic through the company’s own operations and the expansion of its offline stores is the biggest challenge this year.

Bubble Mart’s big moves overseas will undoubtedly bring new pressure tests across overall organizational management, brand operations, logistics management, and the supply chain.

For example, when faced with the uncertainty of geopolitical conflicts, how to control logistics timeliness and costs; how to do more localized site selection, operations, and fine-grained management; how to control the costs of opening large stores; and also, when more and more new businesses related to IP keep increasing, how should Bubble Mart maintain the stability of its core focus—this may also be a valuation logic worth focusing on more than short-term sentiment.