Pop Mart, Aranya and LVMH Discuss Building Brands Around Emotion in Wuhan

The founders of Pop Mart and a Chinese makeup brand joined a senior LVMH executive on stage in Wuhan to talk about how to build brands that last, according to WWD, which reported the panel on 30 October 2026.

The session took place at the WWD x SKP Global Fashion & Beauty Summit, a conference run by the US trade publication WWD with SKP, a Beijing-based shopping centre operator. The event covered keynote talks and panel discussions on the business and future of fashion and beauty.

The panel brought together Wang Ning, founder of Pop Mart, the collectibles company behind the Labubu figures. Also on stage was Mao Geping, who started out as a makeup artist and teacher before founding his namesake beauty company, MAOGEPING. Ma Yin, founder and chief executive of Aranya, joined them. Aranya began in real estate.

Andrew Wu, the Greater China president of LVMH, the French luxury group that owns Louis Vuitton and Dior, moderated the discussion. Wu joined Pop Mart as a non-executive director last year, a board role that does not involve running day-to-day operations.

The panel focused on building brands around emotion, culture and lasting value. Each speaker's career offers a different route into that question.

Pop Mart's story goes back to 2016, when Wang Ning signed Molly as the company's first artist intellectual property, or IP, a term for the characters and designs a company owns and licenses. The artist behind Molly is Hong Kong artist Kenny Wong. Pop Mart has since built its business around collectible figures sold in blind boxes, where buyers do not know which figure they will get until they open the package.

Mao Geping's company has a link to China's past. In 2018, he began working with the Palace Museum, the former imperial palace in Beijing, on annual collections drawing on traditional Chinese imagery and motifs.

Aranya's name comes from Sanskrit, the ancient language of India, where it means "forest" or "wilderness." The name is a reminder that the company's roots lie in property rather than in fashion or toys.

What the panel adds to the wider picture is a meeting point. A toy company, a makeup brand, a property business and a luxury group each sell to consumers, and each has to decide how much of a brand's value comes from the product and how much from the feeling it creates. WWD's report shows the four speakers approaching that question from very different starting points.

The summit itself points to a bigger trend in the Chinese market. Consumer brands in China have been moving from foreign imports toward homegrown names, and luxury groups such as LVMH have been working more closely with local partners. The panel offered one example of that exchange.

For anyone following these companies, the next signals will come from their own announcements, such as product launches, store openings and financial results, rather than from conference panels.