Jellycats Are Clawing Their Way to Adult Popularity

Francesca Lesinski

August 31, 2024

The stuffed animal brand Jellycat has been around for 25 years, and so has one of its main demographics. Marketed toward “people of all ages,” Jellycat is experiencing an unprecedented surge in popularity among adults.

The owner of Beverly Hills children’s boutique English Rabbit, Kelly Dowdy, has been selling Jellycats since the store first opened in 2017. While English Rabbit primarily sells clothing, Dowdy said adults are stopping in to exclusively shop for Jellycats. Once a quarter, a man in his sixties walks into her store to purchase a Jellycat, Dowdy said. 

“We have a regular who collects them,” Dowdy said. “He has bought clothes before, but they were for the Jellycats. And our clothes are high price, so he’s treating his Jellycats the way someone with the highest-level income is treating their children.”

Dowdy said she now sells an equal number of Jellycats to adults as she does to children under six. In the past year, English Rabbit made $30,000 in revenue from Jellycat sales alone, selling 52 in June. 

A study released by Glimpse in June 2024 estimates that consumer interest in Jellycat grew by 83% in the last year. Dowdy said she partially accredits this Jellycat “craze” to TikTok influencers. 

“Ever since TikTok started, there’s been a huge increase, not necessarily with kids, because that’s maintained about the same, but it’s with the adults coming in to buy them,” Dowdy said. “We now get phone calls and DMs with people looking for specific ones that are hard to find.”

Based in London, Jellycat has expanded to 77 countries and developed global fandoms on social media platforms such as Reddit, TikTok, Instagram and X. One of 22,000 members of the "r/Jellycatplush" subreddit, Elisheva Hernandez, 24, started collecting Jellycats in 2018, before they became viral on social media. Together, she and her husband own 36 Jellycats. 

“I would definitely say that social media affected demand, especially TikTok,” Hernandez said. “I think the variety of options they have allows young people to feel like they’re expressing individuality while also participating in a trend.”

Associate Director of Merchandising at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) Chay Costello, 49, said that the MoMA Design Store has been carrying Jellycats for over a decade. Their SoHo location recently hosted an event that presented MoMA’s expanded selection of summer Jellycats.

“The appeal is immediately recognizable,” Costello said. “People walk into our stores, see a display of Jellycats and are immediately engaged. People know which of the Jellycats is the one for them.”

The Supervisor of the Children’s Department at Vroman’s Bookstore in Pasadena, Maya Ledesma, said that as a young woman, she, too, understands Jellycats' consumer appeal. 

“They are very cute, but then there's also a bit of trendiness to them,” Ledesma said. “I think it’s a little signifier of ‘hey, I like cute things,’ and ‘you like cute things, too.’”

Ledesma said many adults inquire about specific Jellycats posted on social media. On Tiktok, #jellycat appears in over 109,000 posts, which she said has normalized adults buying children’s toys. Due to this increased demand, she said Vroman’s Bookstore orders a new shipment of Jellycats every week to maintain its stock.

“Jellycats have been an item that we’ve consistently sold very high sales of, but in the last few months, we’ve had a lot more people coming in,” Ledesma said. “It was so surprising when people first started coming in after seeing them on TikTok, but it’s good for the store.” 

Prominent social media influencers such as Spencer Barbosa have posted TikTok videos displaying their Jellycat collections. 

With 10.2 million followers on TikTok, Barbosa amassed 99,900 likes on a TikTok with the caption “jellycat pls sponsor me im insane #girls #jellycat #trend.” 

“I am one of those grown women who collect Jellycats and every single one of them has a name,” Barbosa said in the video. “It’s literally insane, I’m 21, why do I sleep with 14 stuffed animals?”

Other Tiktok users, including Ro Mitchell, Lauren Victoria and Chloe Vaughan, have posted themselves visiting popular Jellycat pop-ups such as the Fish and Chip Shop in London, the Diner in New York City and the Pâtisserie in Paris, respectively. 

American Rag Cie Manager Micheal Sanders, 41, said that despite not being aware of a social media trend popularizing the brand, he has also noticed an increase in consumer interest. “We continue to get restocks and we continue to sell them, so the demand is clearly there,” Sanders said. 

Aside from social media, all three carriers said the high demand might be a residual effect of supply chain issues the company encountered during Covid. “Jellycat had issues keeping their products in stock and couldn’t fulfill orders, so we couldn’t get them,” Dowdy said. “People started wanting them more because they couldn’t get them.

The CEO of Jellycat, Arnaud Meysselle, wrote via email, “Only the fans and the products do the talking at Jellycat.”