SEOUL, South Korea—Mickey Mouse, Hello Kitty: Move over. And make way for laidback Brown bear and his irrepressible girlfriend Cony the bunny.
Once just digital stickers that users of mobile messaging app Line send to each other like emoticons, the bear, the bunny, and their seven friends will soon be unleashed through stores, virtual reality, and possibly an animated film.
For smartphone users in Asia where most of Line’s 181 million monthly users are located, the characters are as familiar as old-school icons such as Hello Kitty and Disney’s animated stars. They are not well-known in America or Europe, but owner Line Corp. hopes to change that.
It plans to open 100 stores selling Brown dolls and other cute “Line Friends” paraphernalia worldwide over the next three years. It has already opened two stores in Seoul, and its first Shanghai and New York stores will open this year.
Though partly an accidental strategy, the company says the bricks-and-mortar presence will draw more users to the app and help replicate its rapid Asian success in other regions. It will also give the company a backdoor into China, where Line is blocked along with other foreign messaging apps and social media sites.
“We never intended to do a character business,” Yoon Sunmin, who oversees Line’s character business, said in an interview that was the first time the company has outlined its merchandizing plans in detail. “It exploded by accident,” he said, drinking coffee from a paper cup emblazoned with the dazed face of Brown.
Brick-and-Mortar Outlets
Visitors to the newly opened flagship shop in Seoul’s trendy Gangnam district screamed with delight when they saw an outsized Brown bear greeting them near the entrance of the three-story store. Locals and tourists from Vietnam, China, and Hong Kong queued to take a picture with Brown and other human-size cutout Line characters, as if they were pop stars.
Evelyn Tan, a 27-year-old from northwestern China, and her friend Keira Yi, 23, from Beijing, said they don’t use Line in China but came to look at Brown and other cute dolls.
“I have some friends from Taiwan and they use Line,” said Tan. “The stickers. They are so cute.”
Larger and more expressive than emoticons, the stickers have been a draw card for Line whose users are mostly in Japan, Thailand, Indonesia, India, and Spain. They also set Line apart from the bare-bones interface of rival WhatsApp, which was bought by Facebook for about $22 billion.
