How Kickomi came to be

Sonny Angel in Thailand

I was in Bangkok. A friend messaged me with a request:

“You’re in Japan, buy me a Sonny Angel.”

Firstly, I wasn't in Japan anymore – I was in Thailand. Secondly, I had no idea what a Sonny Angel was.

I typed it into Google. Pictures of tiny, naked figures in hats popped up: a strawberry, a carrot, a small fruit on their head. Pastel, quirky, sweet in a way that didn't fit anything I knew. “Okay,” I thought, “if someone wants this, I’ll try to find it.”

Three days of searching. Sold out everywhere.

Finally, I found a shop in one of Bangkok's shopping malls where there was a strange rule: you have to spend a minimum of 50 PLN on other things, only then can you buy one Sonny Angel. Classic scarcity mechanics, which I didn't name at the time, of course – I just knew it was absurd and that I had to do it because I promised.

I went into that store. And I saw a whole shelf of sweet, strange creatures I'd never seen in my life. Sonny Angels, some Smiski, some other brands I didn't know at all.

I spent those 50 PLN. I bought a Sonny Angel for my friend. I also bought a few for myself. I didn't understand why – I just wanted to.

Back then, I didn't know it was called art toys. I didn't know it was a global market worth billions of dollars annually. I didn't know that a year later I would be running a store in Poland.

Labubu and my English teacher from Malaysia

Five months later. All I had left from Thailand were pastel creatures on my shelf and the memory of an absurd store. Life went back to normal – I worked, lived in Wrocław, and twice a week I had English lessons with a teacher from Malaysia.

One day, in the middle of a conversation, she tells me:

“You know, those Labubus are so ugly. I don't understand why people wear them.”

I didn't know Labubu. I typed it into Google. I looked: small creatures with nine sharp teeth, fur, big eyes. Ugly? Maybe. Hypnotic? Yes. "If people in Malaysia don't understand it, but still wear it," I thought, "that means there's demand. I'll bring some to Poland. Maybe it will work."

I listed the first pieces on Vinted. They sold in one day.

I restocked on Allegro. They sold there too.

I looked at it and thought: wait, what's going on here. Because it wasn't like I sold one figure and I was right. It was like every item I listed found a buyer within a few hours.

I started driving to the Netherlands for morning drops. Leaving in the evening, sleeping in the car in the middle of the night, and going to the drop in the morning. My schedule was tight because I was finalizing my master's degree at the same time. I started importing other IPs – not just Labubu, but Skullpanda, Hirono, Crybaby. I checked what worked, what sold, what stayed on the shelf.

It was a classic seller's hustle. Arbitrage: buy where it's cheaper; sell where it's more expensive. Work, but work that suddenly brought in decent money.

I still wasn't a collector. I still didn't see these things as art. They were products to me.

Another plane to Asia

I'm packing my backpack for four months. The plan was simple: I travel around Asia, run the business remotely, and my sister sends packages in Poland.

The first few weeks went as planned. Sales were still going, Ksenia was printing labels, customers were receiving orders in 24-48 hours. I went from cafe to cafe, responding to messages from my phone.

Until at some point, sales dropped.

It was painful. Everyone in Poland who wanted Labubu already had them – the hype passed, the first wave evaporated, there was no second. Classic seller's bubble: you jump into a hot product, you have good weeks, then the market gets saturated, and you're left with inventory.

I should have been stressed. But then I noticed something strange: interest in the topic itself was still there. People wrote to me with questions, scrolled through the assortment, added items to their watchlists. It wasn't specifically about Labubu. It was about collecting.

And that was the first crack in my seller's mindset.

River City

One day in Bangkok, I stumbled upon River City – a multi-level art gallery in the old part of the city. I went there for antiques, because back then I collected old objects; I like to delve into the past.

I found antiques. But next to the antiques, in the same gallery, on the same floors, there were things you would never see in Polish galleries.

Pokemon cards displayed in glass cases like exhibits. Illustrations that looked like children's drawings – deliberately, consciously, as part of an individual exhibition. Art toys alongside classic sculptures. Local artists whose first works hung next to masters' pieces. Everything side by side, everything treated as equally valid art.

There was no hierarchy of "high / low." There was no gallery for "serious art" and a separate shop for "trinkets." Everything coexisted in one space.

I stood there and thought: damn, why isn't this in Poland?

Small art for everyone

I graduated from art school. My whole life I thought about high art – gallery art, institutional art, inaccessible art. Art that you see in museums, buy at auctions, read about in catalogs.

But in Bangkok, in River City, in the shops on Sukhumvit, I saw a completely different model. Art that costs 80, 150, 300 zlotys. Art that people buy for their home, for a shelf, for a desk. Not for a museum. Not for a gallery. For their life.

This was not an aesthetic discovery – because aesthetically, I had liked these figures for a long time – but a structural one. I saw that there exists an entire category of art that the Polish market hardly recognizes as art. It knows it as "adult toys," "TikTok eccentricity," "a trend for Chinese figures." But not as an artistic category.

And these are artists. Kasing Lung, who created Labubu – an independent illustrator from Hong Kong, grew up on Nordic fairy tales, his art has its own philosophy. Xiong Miao, the author of Skullpanda – narrative series, visually powerful, each collection like a separate exhibition. Hirono – the character of a child processing their emotions, each series is a different chapter of the story.

It's all art. Just on a different scale, in a different medium, distributed differently.

And then in Malaysia, I decided: to hell with being a seller. I want to build a brand. I want to bring this small art for everyone to Poland. I want to talk about it, write about it, explain it – so people know that what they buy has an author, has context, has meaning.

It wasn't supposed to be a store. It was supposed to be a medium.

Name: Kickomi

I came up with it that same day in Malaysia, sitting with my laptop.

Kick – because before I sold figures, I sold shoes. Kicks is slang for sneakers; I sold them online for several years. That was my first "business." I included the word out of nostalgia, so something of that earlier Kejt would remain.

Omi – an Asian softening. Something that adds warmth, sweetness to the sound. It fit what I was doing now.

Kickomi – my two lives in one word. The Polish shoe market and Asian art toys. The first and second parts of my career, phonetically linked.

That same evening, I bought the domain.

Store launch

The store launched in December 2025, while I was still in Asia. Shopify setup, first products, packaging, regulations, return policy – all from my phone and laptop in a rented room. The first packages in Poland were packed by Ksenia. The first orders I signed from Bangkok. The first messages from customers I answered during Polish hours, with a six or seven-time zone difference.

It was a completely different feeling than Vinted. Vinted was about selling. Kickomi was about building something with its own identity. Every product I listed had its description. Every artist got their own subpage. Every package had its signed card.

In January 2026, I returned to Poland. I opened the door to my apartment, saw the boxes Ksenia had kept for me for four months, and realized there was no turning back.

What now

It's June 2026. Kickomi has been operating for half a year. It sells daily – Pop Mart, Labubu, Skullpanda, Hirono, Fugglers, Smiski, BE@RBRICK, Sonny Angel, and a dozen other brands. I have ambassadors, a regular newsletter, a blog with artist profiles, and a TikTok where I talk about art toys as art – because they are.

I repeat this often, but I want to repeat it here, in full, once and for all:

This is the whole story. From a single friend's message in 2024 to Kickomi in 2026. Unplanned. Not buried in a vision. Simply – one step, then the next, then a decision in Malaysia.

If this story resonates with you – whether you have your own collection of anything, or you wonder if it's "silly" for an adult to buy figurines, or you're looking for a place where these things are taken seriously – stay a while.