the Chinese Amazon of ultra-fast fashion that has shortened the prices of the ‘low cost’

The Shein’s success on TikTok – converted into a fabulous promotion platform and in which large communities of users share brand information – certifies an unusual post-pandemic world in which two Chinese technology companies connect with global digital youth, a corollary of the fact that the country moves faster than clichés and prejudices to use.

Shein has not invented the wheel but has emphasized the speed and low prices that boosted multinationals such as Zara or H&M with a recipe that includes agile logistics, artificial intelligence and an aggressive social media policy that has earned it more than 250 million followers. The pachydermic ‘online’ showcase, however, the closer to Amazon than its textile rivals. The plan already suggested success: to link the largest production machinery on the planet to the most consumerist generation that times have seen. No physical stores, no intermediaries. One phone and one click, that’s enough.

The evolution of the company is dizzying. born in 2008 in Nanjing, capital of Jiangsu province, and specialized in the export of wedding dresses. Today sells in more than 200 countries and their income last year exceeded $20 billion. A recent funding round estimated its value at 92,000 million euros, more than the sum of the Spanish Inditex (62,000 million) and the Swedish H&M (18,000 million dollars). The downloads of its application have exceeded those of Amazon in the United States for several months and it is already the third start-up in the world after the also Chinese ByteDance (owner of TikTok) and the American Space X.

The young women are your main niche but also caters to men, children and pets to complete a catalog without rival in breadth, with more than 600,000 productsnor in dynamism: aadds an average of 6,000 items daily and only the 6% last more than three months. your designers they don’t look for trends on the catwalks from New York, Paris or Milan. Go to social networks, with much shorter cycles. It is the most refined and efficient trial-error method: many orders to their factories do not exceed dozens of units and only the jubilation in the networks will dictate mass production. It breaks the casuistry of the sector because it does not release products and crosses its fingers that they like it. A market strategy, which does not neglect its own content or the ‘influencers’, keeps interest alive with a feedback dynamic.

Once the demand is created, it remains to be satisfied. Shein has 6,000 factories on the east coast that function as one. A mobile app informs them of the products that are missing and those that are left over, of the discarded and the successful ones, forming a real time inventory. Shein does not lack candidates due to its one-month payment policy in a sector that usually takes up to three.

The behemoth’s speed is striking to many, says Jeffrey Towson, an investment professor at Peking University’s Guanghua School of Management. “It’s a model that makes Zara slow. All consumers are on the mobile app, they have thousands of new products every day and the factories respond instantly. Interact with your customers, study which videos are the most watched, create fashion and satisfies it”. If Zara requests minimum orders of 2,000 units in 30 days, Shein requests a hundred in 10.

But the main factor, he insists, is the price. “Convert to Anyone with a mobile phone in the world is a customer of Chinese factories. There are no middlemen, retailers, or warehouses. Besides, use tax loopholes from export. They do not violate the laws but take advantage of regulations that are not yet completed. “Shein caters to those who are looking for very cheap products of reasonable quality. It is not difficult to find dresses, fakes, shirts or shoes for a dozen euros. The price, Towson points out, downplays the lack of physical stores: “If you buy books, you don’t need to walk to the bookstore. But if you buy clothes, you need to try them on. With Shein it does not happen. If you don’t like it, you’ve only lost a handful of dollars, “he reasons. You don’t go to Shein in search of the jewel of the closet but of perishable garments.

From his founder, Chris Xu or Yangtian Xu, there are only scraps. His biographies are not crammed into libraries and avoid the media spotlight. hardly know that studied in the United States and that he left the ‘marketing’ industry in 2008 to create Sheinside, the embryo of his current empire, at the height of the global financial crisis. His previous work experience in exporting and search engine branding explains Shein’s current success. It features some celebrities and fashion bloggers and builds customer loyalty with discounts, mini-games and express delivery.

Its emergence like a tsunami in the industry has generated criticism similar to that heard by the multinationals that led the penultimate revolution years ago. Improvable respect for intellectual property, extremely long working hours and the punishment to the environment. Complaints rage about a sector that causes 8% of global carbon emissions, that recycles just 1% of its production and that has rarely led the improvement of labor rights in the developing world. The Chinese company – whose suppliers have come to work 75 hours a week, according to a complaint by the Swiss group Public Eye – has accepted the criticism and promised to make amends. The challenge is capital. Few predict that Shein will go down in fashion history as a curious fringe note, but rather as the forerunner of a new model. Other companies busy in the feverish production of urgent garments are already squeezing in its slipstream to meet the demand of our times and the future.