(Yicai Global) May 22 -- Pop Mart International Group has reportedly opened a store in Malaysia’s capital Kuala Lumpur, making it the second Southeast Asian market where the Chinese maker of toy collectibles has opened a brick-and-mortar outlet.

The store is in Pavilion Kuala Lumpur, a shopping mall in the Bukit Bintang shopping and entertainment district, Shanghai Securities News reported today, adding that the Beijing-based firm plans to open more stores overseas.

Pop Mart had previously entered the Malaysian market via cross-border e-commerce in 2021, laying a foundation for its offline business in the country.

The company has shown increasing interest in Southeast Asian markets since it began to go global in 2018. Pop Mart opened its first physical store in Singapore in 2021 and now has eight in the country.

The firm had 43 stores and 120 robot outlets in Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan and in foreign countries at the end of last year. It opened two in Sydney in March this year.

Pop Mart had operating revenue of CNY4.6 billion (USD654.5 million) last year, up 2.8 percent from 2021. Revenue from overseas markets accounted for 9.8 percent of the total, compared with 4 percent in 2021.

The company will have more than 80 stores and 200 robot outlets overseas by the end of this year, and 70 percent of them will be in East and Southeast Asia, with 30 percent in Europe, the United States, and Australia, said Wen Deyi, president of the firm’s global business.

Editor: Tom Litting