SHEIN | The Fashion Statement of the World

SHEIN is a Chinese online fashion brand and is the world’s largest fashion retailer as per the data of 2022. They have shipped across 220 countries and were known so popularly because of their affordability.

Beginning and Success of SHEIN

SHEIN was founded in China by Chris Xu in 2008. It was originally named ZZKKO. Their website SheInside.com was launched and registered in March 2011. It became the worldwide leading clothing company, mostly selling clothes for women. The source of this company was Guangzhou, which is a wholesale clothing market in China. SHEIN acquired Romwe, which was again a Chinese online retail store. It was in 2016 when the company had a total of 100 employees. By this time, they had their headquarters built in Guangzhou, China. 

SHEIN’s products were available in Spain, France, Russia, Italy, and Germany by the 2010s. In 2012, they started using social media as a marketing tool where they collaborated with a few bloggers on Pinterest, Facebook, and Instagram. SheInside was changed to “SHEIN” in 2015. By this time, SHEIN as a brand had started gaining much popularity. It was in 2016 when Chris had over 800 designers who designed and manufactured SHEIN’s clothes. SHEIN’s clothes have been featured on various TV shows in the US and also on some clothing businesses like Fashion Nova. 

SHEIN started getting popular among teenage girls with the fashion bloggers and YouTubers posting their shopping haul videos. Tiktok also boosted Shein’s popularity among teenage girls and influencers. 

As of November 2021, SHEIN is valued at 15 million dollars. During the Covid-19 pandemic, they made about 10 billion dollars in revenue. As per the data for 2022, SHEIN has emerged as the largest online fashion store. 

Marketing and Popularity

It is said that TikTok has played a significant role in influencing the customers to buy from SHEIN. There was a thing going on wherein fashion influencers would post their haul videos after purchasing a pile of clothes from the brand. The clothes produced by them were extremely modern and in trend which drove its sales massively. They manage to keep up with the trend, so whenever there was a new trend going on, people knew where to look for it! 

SHEIN was the most talked about brand in 2020 after Tiktok and YouTube. The success was also due to the affordability as most teenage girls preferred shopping under a budget. The fashion influencers who had just started out could also buy easily and post content. A common marketing strategy that SHEIN uses is that with more spending, customers can get more discounts. With more and more discounts customers were driven to shop more, which in turn increased their sales. 

SHEIN India

SHEIN was very popular in India and was the source for the majority of the girls to shop for clothes. Unfortunately during the Covid-19 pandemic, the Government of India had put a ban on several Chinese apps like Tiktok and PUBG, and SHEIN too found a place on that list. However, during the Prime Day sale of Amazon between July 26 and July 27, Amazon brought some of SHEIN’s products to their website. 

Also Read: Myntra | India’s most successful fashion e-commerce company