To say that the language learning app Duolingo relies a lot on its green owl mascot — also known as Duo — is something of an understatement.
The fluffy bird is plastered all over the company’s merchandise, from plushies and t-shirts to beanies and backpacks. On TikTok, all of Duolingo’s posts feature Duo, and often the content riffs on memes about Duo guilt-tripping people when they skip a language lesson. It’s a tactic that has won Duolingo, and its feathery mascot, a massive, if niche, fanbase, especially among Gen Z. Duo was even permitted to walk the red carpet after the app was referenced in the blockbuster movie Barbie.
Now, Duolingo rendered its app — and Duo by extension — into a real-life experience with a pop-up store in New York City’s Soho neighborhood. The 600-square-foot shop was located on Grand Street and featured limited-edition merchandise, like bright green Crocs inspired by the company’s mascot, which cost around $70 per pair.
Duolingo has one clear-eyed mission: “To one day make Duo as famous as Pikachu,” Michelle Sharp, Duolingo’s director of marketing operations, said in an interview with Modern Retail. “Everything that we’re doing — protecting the IP, expanding to different platforms and doing things like this experiential pop-up — is all towards that goal.”
As such, Duolingo’s pop-up store is more than just a merch drop. To gain entrance to the so-called “Streak Society” pop-up — a reference to the app’s exclusive club for members who reach a seven-day streak or more — guests had to first complete a Duolingo lesson. Once inside, attendees could play games and take photos with Duo.
In the spirit of the app, the bigger the streak a person has, the more opportunities they can unlock at the pop-up. For example, the pop-up store had a claw machine with plushies and other prizes, and attendees with a 30-day or more streak get a ticket to play the machine. The pop-up also featured a giant leaderboard where guests’ streaks will be added as they enter the store, and every 30 minutes, the learner with the longest streak won a jumbo-sized Duo plushie.
Duolingo’s pop-up store comes at a time when the company is on a winning streak of its own. During second-quarter earnings, the language-learning app saw revenues jump a whopping 41% from the same period a year ago to $178.3 million. The number of people paying for Duolingo grew 52%, with 8 million subscribers now paying to use the otherwise-free language app. The company has been profitable for five consecutive quarters.
Duolingo has only been selling physical merchandise for about two years, but Duo’s growing star power made it an obvious new revenue stream, said Sharp. The company declined to provide exact sales figures, but Sharp said its merchandise sales have doubled every year since its online store launched. The platform also sells products wholesale through boutique retailers, as well as on Amazon. As demand for Duo plushies grew, the company expanded its merchandise selection to also include products that cater to its growing cast of characters in the Duolingo-verse, such as the cartoon bear Falstaff and goth teenager Lily.
Sharp knew Duolingo’s bet on retail merchandise was a success when counterfeits started to crop up on marketplaces like Amazon and Alibaba. Duolingo’s merchandise has become so popular that the company now puts in take-down requests for counterfeits on a daily basis. As Sharp put it, “We’re flattered by it.”
Duolingo’s retail strategy seems to take inspiration from other brands that have manifested their characters in the real world. Pokémon’s Pikachu, of course, springs to mind. But there’s also Netflix, which opened a pop-up store in Los Angeles last year selling merchandise based on the streaming giant’s hit shows like Stranger Things. Netflix plans to open a permanent retail location in 2025. Last year, an Angry Birds-themed retail cafe debuted in New York City’s Flushing neighborhood in the middle of a mall food court.
Duolingo also isn’t the only non-retailer that has dabbled with pop-ups. On Aug. 21, The New York Times hosted a pop-up in New York City to celebrate the tenth anniversary of its mini crossword.
“Pop-ups are becoming more and more important for all businesses that do business online because you can only get discovered in that one medium,” said Michael Brown, a partner and Americas retail leader at consulting firm Kearney. “It’s really about capturing new audiences and new customers.”
Duolingo’s app is not a video game or a toy like Angry Birds or Barbie. But there are gamification elements at play. For example, users earn experience points and gems, the game’s in-app currency. Members of the app’s Streak Society, in particular, can unlock rewards – from exclusive avatars to bonus gems – the longer their streaks last.
The lion’s share of the company’s overall revenue comes from the fraction of users that pay to skip ads or utilize its new AI-powered features, according to The Wall Street Journal. As such, merchandise represents a way for the company to make more money without bombarding its fanbase with more ads, though Sharp noted sales were not the focus of Duolingo’s retail efforts.
“Sales is secondary to spreading brand love and building brand awareness through merch,” she said.
To Kearney’s Brown, retail for a company like Duolingo is more about advertising than the merchandise itself. “If someone’s wearing a Duolingo T-shirt on the street or if someone’s got the Duolingo owl on their shelf at their house, then every piece of merchandise becomes a billboard for them.”
Still, Sharp said she’ll consider the event a success if they sell out of their total inventory — some 7,000 items. Early numbers suggest Duolingo is poised to meet, if not outright beat, its initial estimates that anywhere between 3,500 and 5,000 people will visit the pop-up store.
In the meantime, opportunities abound. It’s too early to tell if more pop-ups or even a permanent storefront will happen in the future, but Sharp said Duolingo is currently in preliminary talks with two brands for collaborations akin to their partnership with Crocs. As a global app, with a huge fanbase worldwide, Sharp also hopes to see Duolingo open more pop-up stores in other countries.
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