Shein just nabbed a gigantic $100 billion valuation in its most recent funding round, per the WSJ. The fast-fashion brand is best known for turning that matching set you saw on TikTok into an affordable dupe within three days—and then partnering with influencers like Addison Rae to promote it.
A Chinese fast-fashion company without a global network of physical stores of its own is seeking a valuation that could be more than the combined worth of high-street staples Hennes & Mauritz AB and Inditex SA’s Zara.
Shein, an online-only retailer of inexpensive clothes, beauty, and lifestyle products that pumps out over 6,000 new items daily, is in talks with potential investors including General Atlantic for a funding round that could value the company at about $100 billion.
Boss Molly Miao says the firm releases between 700 and 1,000 new items a day, with the firm producing around 50-100 of each product and mass-producing those that see high demand.
The approach has drawn the ire of some campaigners who say it has contributed to the industry’s fast-fashion problem – its fast turnaround model produces between 35,000 and 100,000 pieces per day, based on the figures provided by Shein.
Based in Guangzhou, China, Shein raised between $1 billion and $2 billion from new investors, including private equity firm General Atlantic, and its existing shareholders, Sequoia and Tiger Global Management, per The Wall Street Journal.
The fundraising round officially made Shein the world’s third most valuable private company, after TikTok parent ByteDance and SpaceX, according to CB Insights, a private market research firm. (SpaceX was last valued at $100 billion in October 2021.)
Shein was founded in 2008 by Chinese entrepreneur Chris Xu initially as a distributor that sources products from wholesale clothing factories in China and sells them worldwide via its website.
The company itself wasn’t involved in design or manufacturing at first. Over time it gradually gathered a team of more than 1,000 designers and established supply relationships with about 3,000 factories in China. It also developed big data-based forecast tools that can quickly determine production quantity based on what new styles sell best.
Shein has become a juggernaut thanks to a combination of supply-chain savvy, data-driven clothing design, and tax loopholes in the U.S. and China that came to the fore during the trade war. Last year it overtook Amazon.com Inc. in downloads of shopping apps in U.S. stores.
The company has operations in Guangzhou, Singapore, and Los Angeles, according to a recent press release. It offers more than 600,000 items to customers in over 150 countries. The startup’s backers include Tiger Global Management, IDG, and Sequoia.
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