Miniso Brand Guidelines: A 2013 Guangzhou Chain, a Red-and-White Mark and IP-Led Stores

A variety chain that began with a Japanese look.

Miniso is a Chinese variety retailer founded in 2013 in Guangzhou by Ye Guofu, whom Inside Retail Asia still described as founder and chief executive in February 2026. English Wikipedia says its first pilot store opened in Guangzhou that year and that the company is headquartered in the city’s Haizhu District. The listed parent is MINISO Group Holding Limited, and English Wikipedia describes its range as household goods, cosmetics, stationery, toys and kitchenware, many featuring licensed characters.

From the start the chain borrowed a Japanese look. Sixth Tone, the Shanghai news site, reported in August 2022 that Japanese style was widely seen as central to Miniso’s early growth, that a Japanese co-founder and original chief designer had been prominent in its early marketing, and that its red-and-white logo resembled that of the clothing brand Uniqlo, while its store layouts and product design used a minimal style that recalled Uniqlo and Muji. English Wikipedia adds that the early logo carried a katakana rendering of the name.

The chain grew quickly at home and abroad, often through local operators. English Wikipedia lists early stores in Hong Kong, Singapore and Malaysia, a first Australian shop in 2017, a first American store in Pasadena in April 2017 and a first British store in Ealing, west London, in November 2019. Not every market lasted: English Wikipedia says the operator in Canada filed for bankruptcy in December 2018, after which Miniso China took over its stores in March 2019, and that Miniso stopped trading in the Republic of Ireland in May 2024.

Miniso listed on the New York Stock Exchange in October 2020 under the symbol “MNSO,” English Wikipedia says. In July 2022 it added a dual primary listing in Hong Kong, which Caixin reported it had priced in early July and Inside Retail Asia later dated to a July 2022 debut; its investor site gives the codes NYSE: MNSO and HKEX: 9896.

An apology, a new logo and the end of the Japanese styling.

The Japanese styling became a problem in August 2022. Sixth Tone reported that a Spanish-language Instagram post from 9 August described dolls dressed in qipaos, a traditional Chinese dress, as geishas, and that the company apologised and deleted it the same day. Criticism on Chinese social media grew, and Miniso issued a statement apologising for having positioned itself “as a Japanese designer brand in an early stage of development.”

According to Sixth Tone and the trade title Retail Insight Network, which reported the apology on 22 August 2022, the company said it had been removing Japanese elements since late 2019, including adopting a new logo with Chinese characters and changing interior design, product labels and shopping bags across more than 3,000 stores in China. It promised to make the same changes to signboards and interior decoration in its more than 1,900 overseas stores by the end of March 2023, and said its head office would run all of its overseas social media accounts from then on.

English Wikipedia says Miniso changed the typeface of its logo again in 2023 and introduced new store types, including IP-themed shops and national flagships. The first of those flagships in China opened in February 2023 on Chunxi Road in Chengdu, Inside Retail Asia reported: about 1,000 square metres with almost 7,000 product lines, including goods made under licence from Disney, Marvel and the NBA, and a fragrance room created with the scent company Firmenich.

For designers, the episode shows a retailer changing its identity in public and in stages: the logo lettering, shopping bags, product labels, signboards and interiors were each named in the company’s statements, with a set date for the overseas stores.

How discount and variety retailers present themselves.

Discount and variety retailers tend to put their offer into the name itself. Some chains take a price as their name, as Poundland did in 1990 and 99p Stores did after it; others use initials, a family name or a short invented word. When a chain built on a single price begins to sell items above it, the name stays on the fascia while the range changes behind it, and advertising rules can then limit what the shop is allowed to say about its prices.

The fascia carries most of the identity. A shop sign on a high street or retail park usually pairs the name with a short strapline, such as B&M’s “Big Brands, Big Savings,” described by The Grocer in 2020. Inside, the same name and colours tend to repeat on aisle headers, shelf tickets, seasonal end displays and carrier bags, so that a shopper sees one consistent mark from the car park to the till.

Own-label naming is a quieter part of the system. Variety chains often sell well-known brands alongside goods under their own labels, and some suppliers prefer their products to appear under a retailer’s name rather than their own. Formats are named in the same plain way: a home store, a local convenience shop, an express branch, each a variation on the parent name rather than a separate brand.

The corporate side is published separately. Listed or formerly listed chains keep investor pages with dated histories of founders, owners, acquisitions and listings, and those pages, read alongside independent press, are a dependable guide to who owns a fascia at any given time. In this sector ownership changes often, through buyouts, listings, sales and administrations, and the guides in this series give those changes with their dates.

Licensed characters as the centre of the store.

Since the rebrand, Miniso has put licensed characters at the centre of its offer. English Wikipedia lists partners including Disney, Sanrio, Barbie, Pokémon and Harry Potter, and says the company runs design centres in China, the United States, Japan and South Korea. Large flagship stores followed abroad: English Wikipedia records Times Square in New York in May 2023, Oxford Street in London in November 2023 and the Champs-Élysées in Paris in June 2024.

In November 2024 Miniso opened the first Miniso Land store on Nanjing Road in Shanghai, Inside Retail Asia reported: about 2,000 square metres over three floors, which the company called an “IP theme park-style” shop, stocked with Harry Potter, Sanrio, Disney and Chiikawa products. A month earlier it had introduced a smaller themed format, Miniso Friends, of 600 to 800 square metres aimed at younger shoppers, with plush toys and blind boxes. At that point the company said it was present in more than 111 countries and territories.

In February 2026 Inside Retail Asia reported that, at its Global Partner Conference, Miniso said it would increase investment in both licensed and its own characters, describing a shift away from its traditional emphasis on low-priced lifestyle goods. It had worked with more than 180 outside IP owners since 2020, the company said. A second Miniso Land in Guangzhou, at Grandview Mall, carried IP products in about 90 per cent of its range, and the format had also opened in Beijing and in Thailand. Miniso also runs a separate toy chain, TOP TOY, which English Wikipedia says opened its first flagship in Guangzhou in December 2020.

For a design guide, Miniso shows how a variety chain can drop a borrowed national style, keep its red-and-white recognition and rebuild its stores around licensed characters. Compare Daiso, the Japanese variety chain, and Flying Tiger Copenhagen. For this guide we use a shop red, a shelf white and a warm grey with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Miniso’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.