Miniso starts spin-off: TOP TOY "flies solo" to verify its quality

The "Miniso system" of trendy toy players is stepping into the spotlight of the capital market.

Recently, TOP TOY, a trendy toy brand under Miniso, submitted its IPO prospectus to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, planning to raise approximately $300 million, with JP Morgan, UBS Group, and CITIC Securities serving as joint sponsors.

The growth trajectory of TOP TOY is closely intertwined with the capitalization process of China's trendy toy industry.

Five years ago, the brand was born amid the market frenzy triggered by the listing of Pop Mart. Now, at a time when Pop Mart has experienced a market value adjustment and regained growth, and the narrative of trendy toy IP has returned to the forefront, TOP TOY has taken a crucial step towards independent listing.

With the support of Miniso's resources, TOP TOY has become the largest, fastest-growing trendy toy collection brand in China, with the highest proportion of self-developed products. The mainland GMV for 2024 has already exceeded 2.4 billion yuan.

By the end of September 2025, the number of TOP TOY stores had reached 299, expanding its business to overseas markets such as Thailand and Japan, with products covering diverse categories including figurines, 3D assembly models, and PVC plush toys.

Before submitting the application, TOP TOY completed a Series A financing round led by Temasek, achieving a post-investment valuation of $1.3 billion, becoming another trendy toy company to enter the "10 billion yuan valuation club."

TOP TOY's push into the Hong Kong stock market coincides with its parent company Miniso accelerating its North American layout and announcing a strategic focus on its own IP.

In this context, a more pressing question arises: Can TOP TOY, which has not fully solved the IP dilemma for Miniso, help its parent company achieve a strategic breakthrough in the trendy toy sector?

The Cost of Channel Advantages

As an extension of Miniso's trendy toy business, TOP TOY largely inherits the store-opening capabilities of its parent company.

TOP TOY adopts Miniso's "quasi-direct" partner model, where partners bear the financial investment and operating costs, while the headquarters controls the entire process of product selection, pricing, and operations.

The light asset model and the endorsement from Miniso have jointly driven its rapid growth in scale.

In the offline consumption recovery of 2024, TOP TOY added over 100 new stores, with revenue expanding by 16.8% year-on-year to 1.9 billion yuan, and profits growing nearly 40% to 294 million yuan.

As of the end of June 2025, among TOP TOY's 293 stores, partner stores accounted for as much as 85%.

However, TOP TOY's core channel support and revenue sources are still highly dependent on Miniso.

As a supplier of trendy toys to Miniso, TOP TOY's sales to Miniso account for nearly 50% of its annual revenue, meaning its products are effectively reaching the market through Miniso's thousands of stores.

Miniso's "acquisition" of Yonghui Supermarket, becoming its largest shareholder, also leaves room for future channel expansion for TOP TOY.

TOP TOY's founder and CEO Sun Yuanwen has suggested that the remodeled Yonghui Supermarket could serve as a channel window for the company's own products, mainly including building blocks and blind boxes The leverage effect of a large channel network on sales growth has been validated. During the market window period when the rubber plush category became extremely popular, TOP TOY quickly captured the category dividend thanks to its extensive reach.

In the first half of 2025, TOP TOY achieved revenue of 146 million yuan in the rubber plush category, reaching 2.3 times that of the entire year of 2024.

TOP TOY is also continuously strengthening its core channel advantages.

In the next five years, TOP TOY plans to cover the core business districts of 100 countries worldwide and open 1,000 stores, while jointly establishing the "China Trendy Toy Export Alliance" with upstream and downstream industries.

Similar to Miniso, which is fully targeting the North American market, TOP TOY's overseas business is currently also in a phase of strategic investment.

In the first half of 2025, TOP TOY's sales expenses doubled year-on-year, reaching 160 million yuan.

This growth mainly stems from increased investments in sales personnel and R&D teams to expand overseas markets, as well as rising international logistics, warehousing, and service costs. The expansion of directly-operated stores has also led to a significant increase in depreciation and amortization costs.

Rapid expansion has also brought multidimensional operational challenges.

From 2023 to 2024, the inventory turnover days for TOP TOY, preparing for the overseas market, increased from 38.1 days to 50.5 days.

The average transaction value dropped from 121.3 yuan to 109.5 yuan, and the average product price fell from 63.3 yuan to 57.8 yuan, with both declines reaching 10%, causing the same-store GMV growth rate to fall from over 45% to single-digit levels.

By the first half of 2025, TOP TOY's expansion pace had noticeably slowed, with fewer than 20 new stores opened.

"Incomplete" Duplication

In Ye Guofu's business landscape, TOP TOY is seen as an extension of Miniso into the "trendy toy" sector.

Miniso has previously stated that MINISO extends from lifestyle goods into the trendy toy field, while TOP TOY focuses on the professional trendy toy track, with differences in positioning, product form, and average transaction value.

According to the latest disclosure in the prospectus, Miniso and TOP TOY have completed a business restructuring, making a clearer delineation of the boundaries of the trendy toy business.

Starting from August 31, the R&D function for trendy toy products will be unified under TOP TOY, and Miniso will authorize its own IPs "Penpen" and "Dundun" to TOP TOY for trendy toy development, charging a licensing fee based on sales.

Important adjustments have also been made regarding the authorized IP cooperation—

Compared to the past model of bundling lifestyle home goods with some trendy toy categories for authorization, now, when the original agreement naturally expires, TOP TOY will sign independent trendy toy licenses directly with the IP parties, while Miniso will only retain the renewal of home goods licenses.

For TOP TOY, about 95% of the related income corresponding to IP agreements will concentrate on expiration in 2025 and 2026.

This also means that TOP TOY will face the possibility of rising IP licensing fees, indirectly increasing costs in the future In 2024, Miniso's licensing fee expenditure reached 421 million yuan, accounting for 2.48% of total revenue. In contrast, TOP TOY's licensing fee was only 32.78 million yuan, with a rate that lagged 0.75 percentage points behind its parent company.

TOP TOY will continue to rely on Miniso's vast distribution network for sales and will provide its own brands and third-party sourced trendy toys in a supplier role.

For any new toys that meet the definition of "trendy toys" in the future, TOP TOY will have the priority to obtain or collaborate on them.

Miniso's position as the company's largest channel and customer remains solid.

However, with the expansion of partner store channels, the sales proportion from Miniso has decreased from 53.5% in 2023 to 48.3% in 2024, and is expected to reach 45.5% in the first half of 2025.

TOP TOY anticipates that the revenue contribution from Miniso will continue to decline over the next three years, dropping below 40% by 2028.

According to the product supply framework agreement, from 2025 to 2027, the suggested upper limit for the transaction amount that Miniso pays to TOP TOY will be 1.66 billion yuan, 2.29 billion yuan, and 2.84 billion yuan, respectively.

In terms of equity structure, Miniso's founder and actual controller, Ye Guofu, still holds 63.5% of TOP TOY's shares.

Therefore, even if a spin-off listing is achieved, TOP TOY's strategic development and business direction will largely continue to revolve around Miniso's overall layout and needs.

IP Challenges Ahead

Without Miniso's full support, TOP TOY may find it difficult to achieve rapid growth.

However, the real gap between TOP TOY and leading players in the trendy toy sector is precisely where Miniso struggles — the lack of proprietary IP.

In 2024, TOP TOY's proprietary IP revenue was only 6.8 million yuan, contributing just 0.36% to overall revenue.

By the first half of 2025, proprietary IP revenue was still only 6.1 million yuan, not reaching one percent of the licensed IP scale.

Months ago, TOP TOY strategically acquired multiple IPs, including "Nuomi Er," intending to accelerate the filling of its IP gap.

The highly anticipated "Nuomi Er" series has accumulated a GMV of approximately 50 million yuan since 2024; the self-incubated "Da Li Zhao Cai" has achieved a cumulative GMV of 35 million yuan over three and a half years.

Despite these efforts, the overall volume and commercial value of its proprietary IP remain limited.

At this stage, TOP TOY still heavily relies on licensing collaborations with top global IPs such as Sanrio, Disney, and Crayon Shin-chan. Under this model, TOP TOY obtains IP usage licenses and develops and produces products under its own brand.

In 2024, the top five IPs contributed 40% of its revenue.

Additionally, more than half of TOP TOY's revenue comes from external finished product procurement. In 2024, its revenue from externally sourced IP products accounted for 50.9%, involving over 600 IPs The relatively dependent external procurement business model is reasonable for TOP TOY at the current stage.

In the context of the continuous explosion and rapid rotation of trendy toy IPs, TOP TOY, as a leading aggregation channel, has a strong appeal to many mid-tier IPs, allowing it to quickly respond to market hotspots at a lower cost and earn stable sales margins through channel advantages.

At the same time, the external procurement model also helps the brand accumulate market data and user insights, providing important references for the development of subsequent self-developed products.

However, the channel itself is difficult to form a competitive barrier, and the core competitiveness of the trendy toy industry ultimately relies on the accumulation and operation of IPs.

There is significant uncertainty regarding whether consumers attracted by external IPs can be effectively converted into loyal users of proprietary IPs.

The strength of proprietary IP not only determines the brand's position in the industry chain but also directly relates to its profit potential and the construction of long-term competitive barriers.

For example, Pop Mart can achieve a gross margin of 70% comparable to luxury goods, while the combination of proprietary and licensed IP models allows 52TOYS to achieve a gross margin close to 40%, but TOP TOY's gross margin is only 32%.

To achieve a breakthrough in the trendy toy sector, IP autonomy is a strategic threshold that must be crossed.

TOP TOY's proprietary IP camp is rapidly expanding.

In the first half of the year, TOP TOY invested 5.1 million yuan to acquire a 51% stake in the trendy toy company HiTOY Haichuang Culture, gaining three core IPs: "Nuomi'er Nommi," "Honey Tianxin," and "Meimei MayMei."

In August, before submitting the prospectus, TOP TOY acquired multiple IPs, including "Ninimo," expanding its proprietary IP scale from 8 at the end of June to 17.

Whether it can leverage channel advantages to successfully incubate a core IP value with lasting vitality remains a critical question for TOP TOY