Podcast Review | How SHEIN Got So Big So Fast By The Twenty Minute VC (20VC) Podcast

How SHEIN Got So Big So Fast By The Twenty Minute VC (20VC) Podcast

Not familiar with SHEIN? It’s only a matter of time…Much like Temu, SHEIN is a China-based global e-commerce giant that has rapidly taken the world by storm. Whilst these two companies are competitors, SHEIN is more of a fast fashion retailer which owns its own inventory (more akin to a purely online version of Zara/H&M) whereas Temu is an online marketplace selling goods across a wide range of categories (more akin to Amazon). From my observations, the products they sell are very, very competitively priced. SHEIN has customers in >150 countries and the growth of this fashion giant has been extraordinary.

This 20VC episode is an interview with Donald Tang, who is the Exec. Chair of SHEIN. Tang was not the founder but has been in charge since mid-2023 (he moved to the US when he was 17 years old and started out washing dishes in restaurants). The interview discusses a broad range of topics both personal and professional. A concept of ‘real-time retail’ is discussed which involves the instantaneous collection, analysis and distribution of data, which in turn drives a more personalised shopping experience for consumers. In reality, how this works is the company tests new styles in small batches and then based on live customer demand signals, either toggle up or down production. This underpins their belief that SHEIN is an ‘on-demand fashion company’ not a ‘fast fashion company’.

SHEIN aims to reverse the fashion notion that good = expensive, low quality = inexpensive. Nowadays as a very large profitable company, the expectation is that SHEIN will IPO in the foreseeable future. It will be interesting to see how the expensive or otherwise the valuation of SHEIN becomes if/when it becomes a listed company.

Note: SHEIN is pronounced “she-in” while Temu stands for “team up, price down”.

‍Link to Podcast

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