MINISO

MINISO Group Holding Limited (simplified Chinese: 名创优品; traditional Chinese: 名創優品; pinyin: Míngchuàng Yōupǐn), trading as MINISO is a Chinese retailer and variety store chain that specializes in household and consumer goods including cosmetics, stationery, toys, and kitchenware featuring IP design. Founded in 2013 by Ye Guofu, its headquarters are in Haizhu District, Guangzhou. In 2023, the company's sales revenue reached $1.9 billion. In March 2019, MINISO began a collaboration with Marvel Entertainment to sell its branded products.
MINISO has expanded outside of the Chinese market and operates over 7,000 stores including designer toy brand – TOPTOY stores and 6,868 MINISO stores in Asia, Europe, Oceania, Africa, North America, and South America. Sustainalytics and Morningstar ESG risk rating rank MINISO as “Low Risk".
MINISO was founded in 2013 by Ye Guofu, a Chinese entrepreneur based in Guangzhou and later a billionaire. MINISO opened its first pilot store in Guangzhou, China in 2013, near its factory. It then expanded to Hong Kong, Singapore, and Malaysia before opening several stores in Sydney, Australia The company was co-founded by Japanese designer Miyake Junya who met Ye Guofu in 2013 through a friend’s introduction according to himself. The company initially employed a Japanese-influenced branding strategy, despite previously operating under Chinese company Aiyaya. MINISO’s first overseas store was opened in Singapore in 2015, two years since its debut in Guangzhou. MINISO has since expanded outside of the Chinese market and operates 6,868 in Asia, Europe, Oceania, Africa, North America, and South America.
In January 2017, MINISO announced that they were seeking to enter the North Korean market, opening their first store in Pyongyang four months later. According to The Economist, the store was popular among the country's wealthy but only accepted foreign currency, including the U.S. Dollar, Chinese Yuan, and Euro as payment. Soon after opening, the company's Japanese branch came under pressure for violating United Nations Security Council Resolution 2321 prohibiting trade with North Korea, distanced themselves from the move, and blamed the Chinese offices for the decision. As a result of the controversy, MINISO promised not to ship any more products to North Korea and the Pyongyang store was rebranded as "Evolution".
In September 2018, MINISO received its first external strategic investment funding of one billion RMB from Tencent and Hillhouse Funding Group. On December 18, 2018, MINISO Canada filed for bankruptcy. In March 2019, MINISO China took over the operations of MINISO Canada. On March 13, 2019, MINISO partnered with Marvel to introduce a range of theme products. MINISO went public on the NYSE in October 2020 under the name MNSO.
In December 2020, MINISO launched a toy brand called TOP TOY, with its first global flagship store located in Guangzhou, Guangdong.
In August 2022 MINISO apologized for "wrong brand positioning and marketing", admitting that the company was a "proud Chinese brand through and through", and said it would remove its Japanese inspired elements (including their katakana logo, メイソウ MEISOU) by March 2023.
In 2023, MINISO released new brand strategies including launching different store types such as IP-themed stores, “super stores” and national flagship stores and changed the font on the logo. Their stores have been revamped, removing most Japanese references, and are much larger in size for more products.
In May 2024, MINISO ceased to exist in the Republic of Ireland and went into administration in Australia.
As of June 2024, MINISO has established collaborations with over 100 intellectual properties such as Disney, Sanrio, Barbie, Sesame Street, Minions, Pokémon, Harry Potter, Care Bears, Snoopy, and Beijing Palace Museum. The company currently operates four design centers in China, the United States, Japan, and South Korea. It has launched over 10,000 Stock Keeping Units (SKUs) related to intellectual properties.
MINISO first established a retail presence in China, and the majority of its stores still operate there. Even so, it has pursued an aggressive expansion plan in countries connected with China's One Belt One Road economic policy, alongside other similar international retailers like Mumuso, XIMIVOGUE, YOYOSO, USUPSO and LÄTT LIV, with shopping malls sometimes having several rival stores. It first began expanding in Asia: Taiwan, Hong Kong, Cambodia, Nepal, Macau, India, Pakistan, Mongolia, Kazakhstan, South Korea, North Korea, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Vietnam, Sri Lanka, the Philippines, Thailand and Bangladesh. Sales in one store in Vietnam on its opening day exceeded $10,000 in one hour. Its Japanese branch closed down in 2020 due to pandemic. MINISO's store in Pyongyang was the first and only foreign-branded chain store in North Korea. It arrived in Australia in early 2017.
On 27 May 2016, MINISO opened its first store in Seacon Square Srinakarin, Bangkok Operating under the name of MiniSo (Thailand) Company Limited which Singtai Trading Company Limited is the sole importer. Currently, in Thailand, MINISO has a total of 52 branches nationwide.
MINISO currently operates 294 stores in North America and 598 in Latin America. On August 6, 2016, MINISO signed a Comprehensive Strategic Cooperation Agreement with an American partner to expand its retail operations to the United States. The first U.S. store opened in Pasadena in April 2017.
In Central America, MINISO opened its first store in Panama. They had opened 4 stores by October 2018. They also started operations in Costa Rica in 2019 where there are currently 10 stores.
In South America, MINISO opened its first retail store in Brazil in August 2017. Its second store followed in Chile in December 2017, where there are now 30 locations. In May 2018, MINISO opened its first retail store in Peru at Jockey Plaza Shopping Center. In Colombia, operations began with the simultaneous opening of two stores on August 30 in Bogotá, and by December 2018, they planned to have 15 stores in the country. In October 2018, MINISO opened its first store in Bolivia and reached its tenth store in that country by 2020.
In Europe, MINISO operates retail outlets in Spain, Germany, Italy, Estonia, Serbia, Armenia, Russia, United Kingdom, France and Iceland among others.
In Africa, MINISO first entered Morocco in early 2017 with 15 stores in multiple cities around the kingdom, South Africa in August 2017 and West Africa in Nigeria one month later. There are also stores in Kenya and in Kampala, Uganda. As of January 2018, MINISO operated two stores in Egypt.
On August 1, 2018, MINISO opened the 1st store in Kuwait in the Avenues Mall Phase 4 (The Forum). On September 25, 2019, the 2nd store was opened in The Avenues Mall Phase 1. On March 3, 2021, the 3rd store was opened in Marina Mall. On July 7, 2022, the 4th store was opened in Souq Sharq Mall.
On September 1, 2018, MINISO opened two stores in Romania and plans to open 40 more stores nationwide. MINISO has opened more than 70 franchises in Pakistan during past three years. On January 12, 2018, MINISO opened its first store in Bangladesh, with 29 stores currently.
In June 2019, MINISO announced it would open 6 more stores in Israel bringing the total to 18 by the end of the year.
On 8 November 2019, MINISO opened its first store in the United Kingdom in Ealing, a west London suburb. They then proceeded to open more stores as of December 2023; including one in Wandsworth, South London and their central London flagship store in Oxford Street on 10 November 2023, as well as a 'MINI MINISO' concept store near Chinatown, London on 29 September 2023. In December 2023, MINISO opened its first Sanrio co-branded pop-up store, located in Margo City, a shopping mall in Indonesia. In February 2024, its largest UK store opened in Camden, London. They are planning to open more high profile stores in 2024.
As of January 2020, MINISO had over 3,500 stores in 79 countries, with an approximate revenue of US$2.4 billion in 2019.
In January 2021, MINISO opened its first offline store in Porto, Portugal, and announced plans to open 250 stores in Spain and Portugal.
As of August 2021, MINISO had four stores in Oman, with three located in the capital Muscat and one store in Sohar.
In May 2023, MINISO opened its first flagship store in Times Square, New York City. In December of the same year, its 100th U.S. store opened in Orlando, Florida. One year later, MINISO opened a pop-up store in Times Square, setting a new U.S. record for sales per square foot and ranking in the top three U.S. stores in terms of sales performance. On October 24, 2023, MINISO opened its first flagship store in Latin America at Costanera Center in Santiago, Chile. In May 2024, MINISO expanded its presence in the New York metropolitan area with the opening of its first IP collection store in New Jersey. By the end of 2024, MINISO opened its 200th store in the United States. In June 2024, MINISO opened a flagship store on the Champs-Elysees in Paris, positioning the store as a global IP co-branded collection hub, launching more than 2,400 IP co-branded products, including Disney, Sanrio, BT21, Barbie, Harry Potter, Plants vs Zombies, Minions, Pokémon and Snoopy. Also in June 2024, MINISO introduced its biggest flagship store at Plaza Hollywood in Hong Kong, making it the brand’s largest store in the region.
On 31 August 2024, the company opened its largest store globally at Central Park Jakarta, Indonesia.
Since its opening, MINISO has focused on "Japanese style." Its logo, store image, and products are similar to those of UNIQLO, MUJI, Daiso and even caused controversy over plagiarism due to being too similar. Their business methods are also known as "cottage-style" business methods.
Laura Wen-Yu Young, a managing partner at San Francisco-based law firm Wang and Wang believes that there are no restrictions on creating a brand that simply sounds Japanese or Korean. She ultimately thinks that it will be up to the customers to decide whether such businesses "will succeed or fail based on normal market principle".
Simon Collins, founder of Fashion Culture Design Unconference and former Dean of Parsons School of Design, suggests that the criticism MINISO has been facing doesn't stand to a certain extent. He does not think that "Muji or Uniqlo represent Japanese cultural brand", given that they are "100% international".
MINISO allegedly started to remove Japanese elements from its stores and shopping bags in late 2019 across its 3,100 shops in China. MINISO’s "de-Japanisation" process has allegedly been completed in March 2023.
Several products of MINISO were also accused of infringing copyrights rather than authorizing the use of characters designed by different cartoonists and illustrators. In mainland China, MINISO and its trademark owner Saiman Investment have been involved in many intellectual property infringement lawsuits, most of which ended with MINISO compensation.
The commodity director of MINISO said that their products "are similar to other famous brands because they are the original factory of the favorite brand products, so the similar appearance is reasonable."
According to reports, the address, chairman, founder, and investment fund of Fenlibao, a P2P online lending platform, are all the same, and there are reports that the platform was established to support MINISO. However, after the Fenlibao platform collected funds from individual investors, MINISO guaranteed it, and then loaned to MINISO’s franchisees at an annual interest rate as high as 18%, and the franchisees were asked to pay MINISO Chuangyoupin, this financing method has been questioned to transfer operating risks to franchisees to conduct "self-financing" (self-financing) behaviors that violate mainland Chinese laws and regulations, and is also suspected of violating regulations that prohibit providing "self-guarantees" to lenders. Its individual financing amount is also suspected of exceeding the upper limit. However, MINISO replied that its "industry-finance integration model" is not self-financing, and believes that doubters do not understand the operating nature of its P2P financing. At the same time, according to the official announcement, the main assets of Fenlibao, an online loan investment docking platform, come from MINISO, and investors can get an annual interest rate of 6-11%, which is relatively "stable." This financing method allows MINISO to "transfuse blood" for franchisees and circulate assets internally to realize its business empire.
While MINISO is a company from China, the company has stated that its products tend to reflect Japanese design which they attributed to having a lead designer from Japan. MINISO's marketing strategy has been compared to Japanese retailers such as Muji and Uniqlo due to similarities in both store aesthetics, brand design, and inventory. Because of its Japanese-influenced branding strategy, the company's products have been criticized as "made in China to look Japanese", particularly when most of the company's stores are located in China, where people trust Japanese brands more than domestic offerings. It has also been criticized for affixing grammatically incorrect Japanese-language labels to many products, a consequence of using Baidu Translate to produce Japanese language copy, as admitted by MINISO's management.
Nevertheless, because of MINISO's success in expanding its number of retail stores, AllianceBernstein, a global asset management company, called its market strategy a success by "filling a price-point niche left unaddressed by the Japanese formats it was imitating".
IP collaborations, word-of-mouth, celebrity endorsements and the ability to launch viral products are the basis of MINISO's success in China. Apart from collaborating with international brands, its store designs that attract customers and encourage social media engagement, it also uses blind boxes to increase sales, especially among young consumers.
In February 2022, MINISO entered into partnership with Peruvian NGO ECOAN to plant a tree in the Andes mountains for each certain number of items it sold. The project was joined by entities from 37 countries and donated 115,000 plants. On June 22, 2022, MINISO launched a charity campaign - Penpen2PENPEN focused on supporting children around the world. MINISO alongside its customers and fans donated goods to children in 18 different countries. In September 2022, MINISO and the China Green Foundation jointly launched the #PlantForPanda# campaign to raise awareness for panda conservation and bamboo planting. The campaign resulted in planting over 50,000 clumps of bamboo for pandas. MINISO’s 2023 ESG Report indicated that it supports women through its marriage and childbirth incentive programs and has established a fund of US$1.38 million. The proportion of women in senior management positions in China is 61.8%.
In 2018 and 2019, MINISO won German iF Design Award for seven of its products including The Wave Pencil Box, "Water Cube" series water bottles, Kendama Gel Pen and portable lint rollers. In 2021, MINISO was awarded the Red Dot award for simplistic and user-centric designs of the Ten Thousand Bristles Toothbrush and the double-sided makeup mirror. MINISO was named 2023 'International Retailer of the Year' and was awarded the 2023 and 2024 'Store Design of the Year’ (Small) by Retail Asia Awards. In 2024, MINISO won the gold award of ‘Best Cause-Related Event’ and bronze for ‘Best Experiential Marketing’ in Event Marketing Awards. MINISO won the “2024 Best Managed Companies” award by Deloitte China and received the title of “Most Intellectual Property Rights Merchandise” in The Malaysia Book of Records, in featuring 4,616 new products of 86 IPs. According to 2023 ESG report, MINISO is turning ““Waste” into Treasure by Using Recycled PET Bottles to Make Plush Toys". In 2024, MINISO won MUSE Design Awards for “the largest store in Indonesia”, MUSE Design Awards for 200 store in the U.S and MUSE Design Awards for its India store.