The archive · Marketing & Growth · Strategic decision · 2011–2016
LINE Friends: chat stickers become a global character brand — ₩5.9tn GMV
LINE's 2011 chat stickers (Brown, Cony) became a licensed retail brand — 22 stores by 2016, 83 in 11 countries by 2017, ₩5.9tn cumulative GMV.
LINE Friends Corporation · LINE Corporation · Naver Corporation
What it had to solve
LINE messenger launched in 2011 with cartoon stickers as a core feature. Users loved the characters and started asking for physical products — but the characters had no standalone business plan; they were chat decoration.
How it works
In 2011 LINE messenger launched with cartoon stickers as a core feature, and the characters Brown, Cony and friends quickly became part of how millions of users expressed everyday emotions. Their popularity inside chat produced the first product inquiries — fans wanted the characters in the physical world.
LINE Friends answered with small entry points first: gift products and global pop-up stores. In 2015 it officially launched the IP business, established LINE Friends Inc. as a dedicated company, and began opening flagship stores — 22 by mid-2016, including a flagship in Itaewon, Seoul that drew tourists from Japan, Taiwan, Thailand and Indonesia.
The retail stores were paired with licensing deals that put the characters on cosmetics (Missha), jewelry (J.Estina), food (CJ CheilJedang salmon cans) and stationery (Lamy, Moleskine). By July 2017 the company ran 83 stores in 11 countries and opened its first large-scale Asian character store in the US, a 430 sqm shop at Times Square in New York.
The numbers backed the strategy: LINE Friends Inc. posted ₩22.5bn ($19.7M) in Q1 2016 sales, more than double Kakao's character business in the same period. Korea's character market grew 36% between 2011 and 2015 to ₩9.8tn, the world's fourth-largest. The brand later expanded into an IP platform with BT21, minini and K-pop collaborations, reporting 18 countries of presence, ₩5.9 trillion cumulative GMV and 70M+ social fandom.
Why it lands
- The characters already had an emotional job — expressing feelings in chat — so retail demand was real, not manufactured.
- Starting with stickers, gifts and pop-ups meant testing demand cheaply before committing to flagship stores.
- Licensing to established consumer brands distributed the characters without building new product categories from scratch.
- Building a multi-IP platform (BT21, minini) let the brand outgrow the messenger's own user base.
What it did
LINE Friends Inc. posted ₩22.5bn ($19.7M) sales in Q1 2016, more than double Kakao's character business; Korea's character market grew 36% since 2011 to ₩9.8tn, the world's fourth-largest. LINE Friends now spans 18 countries with ₩5.9 trillion cumulative gross merchandise volume and 70M+ social-media fandom.
What you can take
An everyday digital utility can seed a brand: characters people use to express feelings carry that emotion into retail — start where fans already live, then license the bond, not just the logo.
Since then
LINE Friends Inc. was founded in March 2015 as a wholly owned subsidiary of Naver-owned LINE Corp., and by mid-2016 it was already outselling rival Kakao's character business two-to-one. It kept expanding — 83 stores in 11 countries by July 2017, with a Times Square flagship as the first large-scale Asian character store in the US — and grew beyond stickers into an IP platform with BT21, minini and K-pop collaborations. The official brand story now reports 18 countries, ₩5.9 trillion cumulative GMV and 70M+ social fandom.
Sources
- ABOUT - LINE FRIENDS corporation
- Line, Kakao ignite Korea's character market boom
- Line Friends to preview 1st US character store
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