In the first half of 2025, the trendy toy character Labubu has sparked a wave of entrepreneurship among young people in China, leading to the rapid emergence of dozens of peripheral brands. However, within just 30 days, many of these “get rich quick” stories ended in failure, with entrepreneurs leaving in debt. This bustling wave of IP entrepreneurship reflects the deeper issues of blindly following trends and the chaotic phenomenon of being misled in the entrepreneurship journey.
“Individual monthly income of 30,000 yuan” and “annual revenue of 2 million yuan”… According to a report by “Chinese Entrepreneur” magazine, Labubu’s custom-made clothing business, considered a “niche” market, gained popularity in May this year. Bubble Mart, the enterprise behind Labubu, reported that its revenue is expected to increase by no less than 200% compared to the previous year.
The newly launched “Resin Plush Hanging Blind Box” quickly sold out upon release, and the hidden version of Labubu 3.0 blind boxes, originally priced at 99 yuan, were resold in the secondary market for 20 times the price, soaring to 2300 yuan.
Labubu, a cartoon character from the fantasy world “The Monsters” created by Hong Kong illustrator Kasing Lung, has seen a further surge in popularity since April 2025, triggering a wave of “peripheral entrepreneurship” in multiple regions.
Since its launch at Pop Mart in 2021, Labubu quickly gained fame, especially from 2023 to 2025, when Labubu peripheral products sold well. Social media was filled with unboxing, display, and resale videos, with some limited edition items fetching ten times their original price in the secondary market.
As of Monday (21st), Epoch Times reporters found that platforms like Xiaohongshu (RED) and Douyin (TikTok) are still filled with numerous “entrepreneurial wealth” tutorials such as “earning 100,000 yuan per month by making Labubu badges” and “self-taught 3D modeling to create Labubu aromatherapy machines.”
According to multiple media reports, at the Tianfu Panda Cultural and Creative Market booths, the domestically produced IP Labubu is being sold. In cultural and creative markets in cities like Guangzhou and Hangzhou, a variety of “unofficial” peripheral products are also being sold.
On Taobao, a start-up store named “Pao Lu Bu Lu” achieved sales exceeding 200,000 yuan within a week, with the founder claiming to have transitioned from a freelancer to an entrepreneurship mentor.
These entrepreneurs, mostly born in the 1990s and 1995s, including white-collar workers, unemployed university students, and full-time mothers, invested between 50,000 and 300,000 yuan into producing IP peripherals and decorating their stores, dreaming of replicating a successful formula.
Amid the Labubu craze, stories of ordinary people achieving “wealth creation” began to emerge. “Chinese Entrepreneur” magazine reported that Gu Huijie, dubbed the “most successful female boss in Yiwu,” opened three stores in two months for her children’s clothing brand, Wawa Yi, employing 500 female workers at sewing machines, estimated to generate monthly sales of over one million yuan roughly; and the “post-2000s handmade mother,” who became a hot topic on Weibo, earned tens of thousands of yuan a month by making clothes for Labubu.
Bean, who has been making children’s clothes since 2017, suddenly gained more exposure this year. Starting from sniffing out opportunities in April last year, the kindergarten version of Labubu’s children’s clothing sold more than 170,000 sets, far exceeding her expectations. Calculated at an average price of 30 yuan per set on the market, a single product generated approximately 5 million yuan in sales.
However, the reports stated that the “get rich quick” stories of the Labubu hype quickly unraveled within a month. In early June, there were frequent reports among the Labubu peripheral entrepreneurs group about store closures, refunds, and accumulating inventory.
Shen Zhu, whose Xiaohongshu ID is “labula pig ding,” once entertained dreams of getting “rich quick” with children’s clothing, even considering quitting her job to focus on it full time. However, after a two-month trial, she found reality conflicting with her dreams. “I haven’t even recovered my costs yet,” Shen Zhu said.
A girl who started a business in Hangzhou posted on social media, saying, “I invested 120,000 yuan for over twenty days, made 300 Labubu ceramic aromatherapy products, but the platform removed them, received copyright infringement warnings, only sold 3 a day, and now the deposit hasn’t been returned, and the mold factory ran away.”
According to the Weibo account “IP Legal Watch,” as of June 15th, at least 38 small-scale entrepreneurial brands related to “Labubu” across China were shut down after being removed or reported for copyright issues on platforms, with average losses for store owners in first-tier cities reaching up to 84,000 yuan.
A e-commerce lawyer in Shanghai pointed out, “Many entrepreneurs fail to truly understand the boundaries between ‘licensing’ and ‘copyright’ and fall into illegal business traps designed by intermediaries.”
According to the AiMedia Consulting 2025 report, over 63.7% of Generation Z entrepreneurs are directly influenced by social media content, leading to overestimating trends opportunities and underestimating business risks.
In April and May 2025, the Labubu+ entrepreneurship related notes on the Xiaohongshu platform saw a 560% increase, with a large number of titles such as “Open a Labubu peripheral store with just 50,000 yuan” and “Earn your first bucket of gold with zero experience” enticing users to join.
“Chinese Entrepreneur” magazine’s investigation revealed the existence of intermediary organizations in the industry providing “IP variant modeling,” “counterfeiting customization,” and “infringement-avoiding promotional materials” targeting novice entrepreneurs, offering courses ranging in price from 999 to 16,800 yuan.
It was reported that a social media platform’s “children’s clothing entrepreneurship course” priced at 1,999 yuan for the full set has attracted over 800 buyers in a single month, with monthly revenue exceeding 1.6 million yuan.
Han Yuming, associate professor in the Department of Sociology at Peking University, stated, “This is a kind of ‘entrepreneurship myth skin,’ essentially exploiting traffic hotspots for quick gains.”
One victim, in an interview with Caixin, confessed, “We are not starting businesses; we are participating in a speculative game with a preset harvesting (leek) sequence.”
The rapid collapse of the Labubu entrepreneurship bubble is not merely individual errors but also reflects a certain pathological structure in the current entrepreneurship landscape among Chinese youth.
Zhihu columnist Xiaoma Song in the marketing field pointed out that once hotspots like Labubu are rapidly commercialized and replicated, they shift from being a “trend” to a “trap.” He emphasized, “The success of Labubu can only be analyzed afterwards, and latecomers can only follow suit. Once a trend becomes rampant, it easily turns into a place for being misled.”
The so-called transformation from “trend” to “trap”: from “metaverse stores,” “live-streaming incubators,” “startup script killings,” “handmade market entrepreneurship” to the current “Labubu peripherals,” each trend spawns a new batch of self-media “mentors” and “money-making jargons,” rarely mentioning real risks and legal boundaries.
Short-term thinking prevails: A 2024 survey on young entrepreneurs by Tsinghua University showed that 56% of entrepreneurs expected to “recoup their investment within six months” and hoped to “turn traffic into money”; however, the percentage of those with a business plan and financial budget was less than 18%.
Mini “leek circles” are prevalent: Entrepreneurship circles on social platforms have become small-scale “closed-loop sales,” where early participants earn training and referral commissions, while later participants are mostly harvested and pushed out.
Analysts believe that the rapid rise and fall of the Labubu entrepreneurship wave is a mirror reflecting the real dilemmas faced by young Chinese people intertwined with anxiety, traffic, and dreams of wealth. IP is not a cash cow, imitation is not a business model. When “entrepreneurship” is seen as a shortcut to escape the current work situation and “success learning” evolves into a manipulated narrative template.