Pop Mart sells $15 toys. Its margin is closer to Coach than Costco.

A $15 blind box and a $500 handbag sit in the same corner of the margin table. Pop Mart reported a 69.7% gross margin for the first half of 2026. Coach closed its fiscal year at 79.7%.

Price tier explains surprisingly little. The accounting treatment matters almost as much, because some retailers report occupancy above gross profit and others below it. That changes how a leasing team should read the numbers.

Coach closed the fiscal year ended June 27 with a 79.7% gross margin and a brand-level operating margin of 35.8% excluding items affecting comparability, on revenue that grew 24% to $6.9 billion with handbag average unit retail rising mid-teens, per Tapestry's 10-K and results release. Pop Mart reported a 69.7% gross margin and a 30% adjusted net margin for the first half, per its August 20 release.

Their reported gross margins are exactly ten points apart. One sells handbags approaching $500. The other sells collectible figures that mostly cost less than a restaurant lunch. Both businesses control more of the product, pricing and distribution than a conventional reseller. In this sample, product control tracks the margin spread better than price tier.

Miniso reported a 43.3% gross margin and a 13.3% adjusted operating margin for the March quarter. Five Below reported 37.2% gross and 12% operating in Q1 FY26. TJX reported a 31.4% adjusted gross margin and an 11.9% adjusted pretax margin in Q2 FY27, with comparable sales up 4%.

NRF's 2026 Hot 25 ranks Miniso No. 1 and Five Below No. 5 by US sales growth. The MINISO brand added 722 stores year over year through March 31, per the company.

The table needs one accounting adjustment: retailers book occupancy in different places. Coach carries store occupancy in SG&A, below gross profit. Pop Mart records lease-related expenses in distribution and selling, also below gross profit. lululemon, Five Below and TJX include occupancy above gross profit, inside cost of sales; Five Below carries rent, common-area charges, utilities and property taxes there, and its filings state plainly that its gross margin may not be comparable to other retailers for exactly this reason. Miniso is a special case: rent for directly operated stores sits in selling and distribution, but most of the group's stores are partner- or distributor-operated, so the corporate margin is not a clean proxy for the rent economics of an individual store.

So Coach's 80 and Five Below's 37 are not the same kind of number. One is calculated before occupancy expense, the other after.

Costco is the useful control group. Its merchandise gross margin, as the company defines it, was 11.04% in Q3 FY26, while membership fees brought in $1.37 billion in a quarter where operating income was $2.82 billion. The thinnest margin in the table belongs to one of the strongest business models in retail, because part of the economics sits outside the merchandise entirely.

A landlord ultimately cares about store productivity, occupancy-cost ratio and the cash a location produces after rent. Public filings rarely disclose all three at store level. Before comparing tenants on margin, check where each one books the rent.

→ Primark at Mall of America opens September 3, the retailer's 46th US store.

→ MUJI is adding four Simon locations at The Shops at Chestnut Hill, The Westchester, Newport Centre and Roosevelt Field.

→ NEPI Rockcastle expects to complete its €252 million MegaPark Barakaldo acquisition in September, subject to customary conditions including Spanish competition clearance.

→ Gurnee Mills announced seven new tenants on August 25, led by a 66,000 square foot new-format IKEA and a Toys R Us, per Simon.

Across seven filings, price tier explained little. Product control mattered more, while accounting policy changed how each reported margin had to be read.

The price tag tells you what the shopper pays. It does not tell you what the tenant earns.

Mati Brooks,

Editor, Malls Money

Malls.com tracks malls, brands, store openings, and retail expansion signals across 50+ countries.