Miniso opened its first overseas Super Miniso store on October 10 at Square One Shopping Centre in Mississauga, Ontario. The location spans 1,000 square metres.
Shelves carry more than 5,000 intellectual property-driven stock keeping units. Categories span character merchandise, beauty, travel accessories and everyday lifestyle products.
This debut brings the full Naruto collection and Stitch Hit Snooze range to Canada for the first time. Upcoming product drops feature Demon Hunter, Chiikawa, Mofusand and Marvel. Miniso will also roll out its proprietary character IP, YOYO, and more than 100 Hello Kitty and Friends products.
Inside the 1,000-Square-Metre Format
The Super Miniso concept departs from the chain’s traditional small-footprint layout. Utility shelving gives way to character-themed shows and experiential floor zones built directly into commodity aisles.
Floor plans blur the line between discretionary collectibles and regular consumable household goods. High-margin licensed items sit in front-of-store lifestyle displays rather than back corners. The strategy targets higher basket sizes.
The IP Economics of Variety Retail
For Chinese value retailers operating abroad, licensed character merchandise is the primary lever to lift gross margins. Generic stationery and plastic organizers yield low ticket averages. Co-branded anime and Disney items command higher price points with minimal extra production costs, helping shed the discount dollar-store label.
Risk lies in inventory turnover and licensing commitments. Securing regional rights for Japanese anime franchises and Western entertainment properties demands minimum guarantee payments that only large-format, high-footfall sites can support. If footfall drops or trends shift quickly, slow-moving licensed stock ties up working capital faster than basic household sundries.
A Four-Store Canadian Cluster
Mississauga represents phase one of a Canadian expansion running through October and November 2026. Four themed large-format stores will open across the country in that two-month window.
Three locations in Mississauga, Winnipeg and Montreal will adopt the Super Miniso balance of curated lifestyle goods and IP collections. A fourth site in Toronto will debut the Miniso Land format. That entertainment-focused concept drops basic lifestyle items in favor of an immersive character park environment.
West Edmonton Footprint and Next Openings
Miniso tested large-scale Canadian demand in November 2025 with a 1,000-square-metre store at West Edmonton Mall. Featuring 5,000 IP lines, the opening set a single-day sales record for its North American operations. The chain followed that in April 2026 with a dedicated Hello Kitty and Friends pop-up in Toronto.
Next up are store rollouts across the three remaining Canadian sites through November 2026, alongside initial sales performance data from the Toronto Miniso Land launch.
