Blind boxes have become a hot commodity for Gen Z and Gen Alpha consumers. With strategic packaging that keeps product contents hidden, blind boxes are designed to pique consumers’ curiosity and delight them with exclusive products — often featuring popular IP from brands like Disney and Sanrio.
Global lifestyle brand Miniso has capitalized on this trend by partnering with some of the most popular IP owners to expand its blind box offering and encourage shoppers to #UnboxMagicalMoments on social media. The retailer has sold more than 20 million blind boxes globally in 2023 and has embarked on a significant effort to drive demand: Blind Box Carnival, a two-month long campaign that is bringing unique unboxing moments to Miniso stores worldwide.
Miniso Blind Box Carnival Tour Stops
So far, Blind Box Carnival has made the following stops:
- China: The initiative kicked off on December 16 in China to coincide with the opening of Miniso’s Hangzhou flagship. The store has a design inspired by the experience of tearing open a blind box and the retailer used a nearby 3D interactive screen installation featuring Zanmang Loopy, Sanrio and Disney characters in unboxing moments to drive store traffic. Blind box sales were the biggest contributor to sales that day, according to a company press statement.
- New York City: The Miniso Blind Box Car took to the streets of Manhattan to spread holiday cheer. Dancing Santas doled out more than 3,000 blind boxes to passersby, inspiring them to venture to one of Miniso’s NYC-area locations. Blind box category sales for the week in the Times Square, SoHo and Tangram stores increased 64% and Miniso garnered 170 million impressions on social media during that time.
- Indonesia: Miniso opened its first dedicated blind box store on December 21 at the Kota Kasablanka mall in Jakarta. Through December 31, shoppers will have the chance to win various prizes, including one of 10 golden blind boxes worth 100 million Indonesian Rupiahs.
- UAE: At the Dubai Hills Mall, Miniso launched a special unboxing event where shoppers got to participate in a life-size machine game.
Miniso plans to bring the Blind Box Carnival to Canada and Vietnam over the next month.
“The Blind Box Carnival is the perfect celebration of MINISO’s belief that life is for fun,” said Robin Liu, Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer of Miniso Group in a statement. “We are grateful to all the shoppers who have engaged with the campaign so far and helped to spread the joy of blind box shopping. While blind boxes is still an emerging category in many overseas markets, we have seen great enthusiasm and strong sales in the markets where we have introduced them. We have great confidence in this strategic category and look forward to bringing blind boxes to even wider audiences in the coming year.”
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