At 1:30 am, while most residents of Ho Chi Minh City had already gone to sleep, 19-year-old girl Thanh Linh and 2,000 netizens were watching a blind bag unboxing event in a TikTok live stream. She bought 10 blind bags and eagerly awaited the shop owner to finish reading the names, anxious to see what gifts she had received.
In Vietnam, such live streams are very popular online, especially since a surge in September. Trendy products like blind bags often sell out quickly, with many of these items coming from China.
According to data from Metric, in the third quarter, the total revenue of 539 blind bag and lucky bag stores on the five major e-commerce platforms Shopee, Lazada, Tiki, Sendo, and TikTok Shop in Vietnam exceeded 4.6 billion Vietnamese dong, with 168,000 items delivered.
As China's largest trendy brand, POP MART has opened online flagship stores on Shopee and Lazada in Vietnam, while also conducting live sales on TikTok.
Other trendy brands like Miniso, 52Toys, and ToyCity have also opened online stores on various e-commerce platforms in Vietnam, while also accelerating the layout of offline stores.
All signs indicate that Vietnam is becoming the next growth hotspot for Chinese trendy products.
<ol>
<li>Trendy products are booming in Vietnam, with over 80% coming from China</li>
</ol>
The trend of trendy products in Vietnam started in the middle of this year.
In TikTok live streams, young people are enthusiastic about trendy products, from cheap blind bags priced from tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese dong to blind boxes priced from hundreds of thousands to millions of Vietnamese dong, all of which are being eagerly snapped up.
When watching TikTok live streams in Vietnam, every 3 to 4 streams will feature a &#34;blind bag&#34; sale. Seller Thanh Phong on TikTok Shop said, &#34;Out of 10 customers, 5 want to open blind bags. 'Blind bag' products accounted for 50% of his live stream revenue last month, far exceeding household items and clothing.&#34;
From reports in local Vietnamese media, we can see how passionate young people are about blind bags. Anh Dao, a 26-year-old girl, watches live blind bag unboxings on TikTok every night recently. She said, &#34;At first, when I saw players buy a few 'blind bags' and win 20 or 30 toys, I was curious. Unknowingly, I became 'addicted' and now spend about 300,000 to 400,000 Vietnamese dong each night buying 'blind bags' in live streams.&#34;
Thanh Dung, a 24-year-old boy, initially spent 79,000 Vietnamese dong on blind bags, but then bought an additional 15 blind bags when he heard the host call his name in the live stream.
Blind bags are mostly inexpensive, while blind boxes can be more expensive. A passionate collector has spent nearly 350 million Vietnamese dong over the past two years, purchasing thousands of blind boxes.
According to VnExpress survey data, in the past three months in Vietnam, there have been over 50 &#34;blind bag&#34; associations and groups on the Facebook social network, with an average membership of 50,000 to 300,000. On TikTok, the hashtag &#34;#túimù&#34; has hundreds of videos and live streams, mainly for exchanging information or buying and selling
The popularity of Vietnamese trendy toys has attracted the attention of Chinese brands. POP MART has successively opened online stores on major e-commerce platforms in Vietnam such as Shopee, Lazada, and TikTok Shop.
In the second quarter, on TikTok Shop, POP MART's 43 stores sold 145,000 LABUBU-related products, generating total revenue exceeding 3 billion Vietnamese dong, a 2.8% increase compared to the first quarter; 116 stores on Shopee and Lazada collectively sold approximately 19,500 LABUBU-related products, earning 2.2 billion Vietnamese dong, a 278% increase.
Trendy toy brands like Miniso, 52Toys, and ToyCity have also opened stores on the e-commerce platform Shopee. Platforms popular among young people such as TikTok Shop, B2C platform Tiki, Alibaba's Lazada, and Vietnam's second-largest e-commerce platform Sendo are also accelerating their presence.
Many white-label trendy toy products in Vietnam are sourced from China, either through online channels like Taobao, Alibaba, or direct procurement from China. According to global trend data in the trendy toy market, over 80% of blind box imports in Vietnam are from China, with an expected annual growth rate of 4.57%.
Chinese companies are also expanding their offline channels in Vietnam.
Previously, POP MART only sold through channels like toy stores in Vietnam, but now they are accelerating their expansion with three stores already opened.
In addition, Miniso's Sanrio-themed store opened in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam on September 1st, becoming the second of its kind in Southeast Asia.
II. Why are blind boxes so popular in Vietnam?
Trendy toys, as the name suggests, are fashionable toys, also known as art toys, mainly purchased by young people aged 15 to 34. Around 2010, trendy toys began to gain popularity, especially the trend that took off in 2015 with blind box releases.
After 2021, Chinese blind box companies began to accelerate their overseas expansion, with Southeast Asia becoming a key focus. The popularity of blind boxes, blind bags, and similar products in Vietnam is not without reason:
Firstly, Vietnam has a population exceeding 100 million, with a large proportion of young people.
By the end of 2023, data from the Vietnamese Statistics Office shows that Vietnam's population has reached 100.3 million, making it the fifteenth country in the world with a population exceeding 100 million. Nearly 70% of the population is of working age, making Vietnam a relatively young country compared to Japan, where the working-age population is 59%.
In 2021, half of Vietnam's population was under 35 years old, with the 15-24 age group accounting for 21.1%, reaching a historical high. Overall, women make up 50.1% of Vietnam's population, with females being the primary consumers of trendy toys.
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Secondly, Vietnam's economy is in a period of rapid development, with a per capita GDP ranking sixth among Southeast Asian countries, and third in terms of purchasing power parity, indicating potential consumer spending power for trendy toys.
By 2023, Vietnam's per capita GDP is $4,284, ranking sixth in Southeast Asia. Calculated by purchasing power parity, Vietnam's per capita GDP is $14,400, ranking third in Southeast Asia, only after Indonesia and Thailand.
Thirdly, Vietnam shares similar consumer habits and preferences with China, with a large Chinese population and relatively small cultural differences.
Currently, there are around 800,000 Chinese people in Vietnam, with most residing in Ho Chi Minh City. Although the Chinese population accounts for only 6% of the population in Ho Chi Minh City, they have strong economic power, with estimates suggesting they occupy around 30% of the city's economy. Moreover, Vietnam has been influenced by Chinese culture since ancient times, providing a foundation for the spread of blind box culture.
Fourthly, Chinese trendy toy brands are concentrating on expanding into the Vietnamese market and implementing differentiated marketing strategies, leading to short-term shortages of trendy toy products.
For example, Miniso's Sanrio-themed stores leverage popular IPs like Hello Kitty to enter the market. The main products in Sanrio-themed stores are blind boxes, along with fashion accessories, aromatherapy products, plastic cups, and more. Under the &#34;blind box + IP&#34; strategy, Miniso has established the independent trendy toy brand TOP TOY series, with blind box sales in Thailand accounting for 6% of total performance.
In addition to launching differentiated IPs, marketing is gradually becoming localized by collaborating with local key opinion leaders (KOLs) to expand the brand and product influence.
Three, two risks that cannot be ignored
The booming trendy toy market in Vietnam is a market with great potential, but it also faces many uncertainties, challenges, and risks.
First is the challenge of religious customs.
Religious customs vary in Southeast Asian countries, and Vietnam is a multi-ethnic and multi-religious country, which may encounter challenges in adapting to local customs and religions. For example, in Malaysia, POP MART's physical stores must provide prayer rooms to respect the customs of Muslims. Such behaviors to adapt to different customs and religions may incur additional uncertainty costs, which may also be encountered in Vietnam.
Second is policy risk.
When blind boxes became popular in China, some irregularities emerged. Later, regulations were introduced to standardize the development of the blind box market, including &#34;blind box operators shall not engage in or engage in gambling activities in the name of blind boxes or in a disguised manner,&#34; and in terms of marketing, &#34;blind box operators shall not engage in false or misleading commercial propaganda on drawing rules, draw probabilities, sales conditions, product quality, etc., to deceive or mislead consumers.&#34;
Currently, some Vietnamese media have poured cold water on the blind bag and blind box craze, focusing on minor issues such as excessive plastic bag packaging pollution, collectibles lacking practical value, and the continuous price increase of blind boxes and blind bags.
Whether Vietnam's policy regulation will become stricter in the future, and whether similar regulatory measures prohibiting gambling and speculation like those in China will be introduced, are the Damocles' swords hanging over trendy toy brands
All of these have added some uncertainty to Chinese trendy brands going overseas to Vietnam

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Vietnamese young people are enthusiastic about blind boxes and blind bags, especially performing well in TikTok live streams. Since September, the sales of blind bag products on e-commerce platforms such as Shopee and Lazada have surged, with a total revenue of over 4.6 billion Vietnamese dong from 539 stores. Chinese brands such as POP MART and Miniso are actively expanding into the Vietnamese market, indicating that Vietnam has become a new growth point for Chinese trendy products

- The popularity of blind bags in Vietnam has surged, particularly among young consumers aged 15 to 34, with over 80% of these products imported from China.  
- In the third quarter, five major e-commerce platforms reported total revenues exceeding 4.6 trillion VND from blind bag sales, indicating a growing market.  
- However, challenges such as adapting to local customs and potential regulatory changes pose risks for Chinese brands expanding in Vietnam.

Vietnamese young people are crazy about blind boxes, Chinese sellers are overwhelmed