Fans flock to offline pop-up stores of popular webtoons, web stories

Naver Webtoon Corp.’s pop-up store poster that features “Maru is a Puppy,” left, and “Meow Man” [Photo provided by Naver Webtoon]

South Korean webtoon platform operators are opening offline pop-up stores that sell a wide range of goods of popular webtoons and web stories, drawing many fans to line up from dawn to buy their favorite character items.

Naver Webtoon Corp. announced Monday that it will run a pop-up store from June 29 to July 12 at Starfield COEX Mall in Samseong-dong, southern Seoul, which features items of popular webtoons “Meow Man” and “Maru is a Puppy.”

The two webtoons are considered the flagship intellectual property (IP) of Naver Webtoon.

More than 400,000 plush toys and other products featuring the characters of Meow Man have already been sold and more than 170 million won ($129,969) has been raised in three weeks from a crowdfunding campaign for cushions and doll-shaped magnets of Maru is a Puppy.

The pop-up store that will open this week will be decorated with the concept of fans visiting the neighborhoods of characters in the two webtoons. It will sell about 260 IP-based products, including large dolls, bags, and key rings, and 200 of them will be released for the first time.

The industry sees that offline sales of popular web novels and webtoon IP will further gain momentum.

Earlier, the pop-up store for the web novel “Debut or Die” drew many visitors. Debut or Die started as a web novel exclusively supplied by Kakao Entertainment Corp. and was later produced as a webtoon.

It is a story of seven male idol singers that become stars through an audition program.

A total of 15,000 people visited the Debut or Die pop-up store at The Hyundai Seoul between May 11 and 24. More than 2,000 fans lined up early in the morning to wait for the store to open on the first day.

Maeil Business Newspaper has learned that nearly 50 percent of the pop-up store visitors purchased items.

The average purchase amount per person stood at 500,000 won.