It may have been "big and decrepit". At this time, it may be right to firmly go to the left or to the right, but ambiguity has the greatest loss. 
ReasonProduced by By Black Beans.
About a month ago, it began to be rumored that Shein was recently conducting a roadshow in the United States, seeking to go public in the United States, with two versions of valuation rumors: 66 billion and 90 billion US dollars. There is no news on whether it will be successfully listed. This roadshow lasted a lot longer than everyone expected. Successfully listing or stuck, an almost certain guess is that they must be repeatedly identified as a problemIs Shein a Chinese company after all?It's impossible to know how they answered. But in 2023, especially since the second half of the year, SHEIN's external image has been working hard in two opposing directions. On the one hand, it downplays its ties to China. SHEIN's earliest operating entity, Nanjing Lingtian Information Technology***, was cancelled in 2021 and registered in Singapore's Roadget Business PteLtd is his current global operating entity. The original trademark owned by the Nanjing company and the ownership of the Guangzhou company were transferred to SHEIN's Singapore company. The statement on the company's official website is also headquartered in Singapore. There are also rumors that founder Koh has changed his nationality to Singapore, but the company has not directly responded to this question. Changes in the company's management team and capital structure are often questioned by the outside world about cutting off the Chinese market. On the other hand, right in the middle of this roadshow cycle. SHEIN internally emphasizes the help of Made in China, and there are many voices who regard SHEIN as an excellent representative of Chinese companies going overseas. Is SHEIN a Chinese company after all?Legally, this issue has been open to debate. Shein has never publicly stated its position on this. From a short-term business perspective, there is nothing wrong with this, after all, expansion is the nature of business. But that may not be a smart choice. A few years ago, for the purpose of globalization, almost all large companies had rumors that some of the company's important operating entities were located in Singapore and other countries, but they did not do it later. At present, the main body of operation is overseas, and TikTok has a strong cultural attribute, which needs to be specially avoided, and the public can understand this. If it is said that TikTok needs to "survive in the cracks", then the "cracks" that affect SHEIN are really not as big as TikTok. It is not recommended to be ambiguous, the reason is like falling in love. When you choose two options, whoever you choose is likely to live happily. Ambiguous, just looking smart, the end result is often offended on both sides. What's more, Didi has already shown everyone the results of large companies using small cleverness on key issues. There is not enough space and time left for SHEIN to toss and turn. Over the years, the pressure on capital to exit can be very high due to successive rounds of high-valuation financing (which may be the reason why it has tried to go public many times). But a company that has been growing rapidly for many years is like a carriage, and the problem of any one component in the wild run will cause the whole carriage to fall apart. This kind of tearing feeling brought about by growth has been painful for almost every large company, and it is also the reason why a large number of star companies have failed. In the past four or five years, the carriage of SHEIN is likely to be "big and declining". Because each of its components has been under pressure for a long time, but there are not many means of growth that can be called. On the one hand, in terms of business space, it needs to ensure a certain growth rate until it goes public. ButEach stage of growth has some internal strength to make up. According to statistics in a research report by Zhongtai**, in 2022, there will be as many as 40,000 to 50,000 new products on Shein every week, of which the explosion rate is 50%. When continuous innovation drives growth, the consumption of copyright is huge. How big a designer team can support such a new amount and how to ensure efficiency are all problems that SHEIN needs to solve. 
In 2022, SHEIN has also been sued for copyright many times. H&M, Zara, Tribe Tropical, Levi Strau, Dr Martens, etc. have all sued SHEIN, and almost all of the world's major fast fashion brands have been gathered. With a flood of new entries, the litigation itself has been escalating. In addition to the brand, in July this year, three independent designers sued Shein for copyright infringement and related to violations of the Anti-Racketeering and Corrupt Organizations Act. Just this month, Temu filed more than 100 pages of litigation documents in a court in the District of Columbia, alleging copyright and illegal business competition. Similar challenges can arise in all aspects of the business. On the other hand, there may not be enough time. People admire pragmatic people, but they are usually afraid of those who are too pragmatic, even if they are the closest partners at this stage. In Xu Yangtian's entrepreneurial story, as early as 2008, he and Wang Xiaohu and Li Peng established Dianwei Information Technology in Nanjing, and he accounted for 45%. When the new company was established in 2011 (the earliest operating entity of SHEIN), the core team was still the same as at that time, but Wang Xiaohu and Li Peng were not listed. This time, Shein secretly submitted the form to the New York Stock Exchange, and many people thought of comparing it with Didi's previous secret submission in the United States. In terms of ** chain, it has been reported that in 2022, SHEIN will achieve revenue of 22.7 billion US dollars, a year-on-year increase of 528%；But net profit was $700 million, down 36% year-on-year. In July 2023, SHEIN's first factory in Brazil and the entire Latin American region was officially put into production. As of October 2023, 336 Brazilian factories have been added to the cooperation list. People's fears may not be true, but it is not uncommon for a single emotion to trigger a butterfly effect. The larger the company, the more difficult it is to deal with. Now it's time for shein to release some sense of certainty outward, and if it doesn't release, the window of time left for it won't be very long. Regardless, SHEIN still has a lot to offer. After all, it has been an unexpected bright spot in the mediocrity of the global Internet in recent years. But if you want to learn SHEIN, what is really worth learning is not the "long-termism" it claims (at least not on the above key event), but pragmatism and borrowing. The benefit of being pragmatic is that you are more focused and persistent. In 2008, Xu Yangtian started his business in Nanjing, and they first made some small goods. Around 2011, Nanjing Lingtian began to sell wedding dresses;Soon, SHEIN positioned fast fashion and expanded the product line along the ** line. In the early days, SHEIN was obscure in China, and it was not until the past few years that it became a blockbuster. And this decade happened to be a round of mobile Internet explosion. It feels like Shein is giving up the advantages of one era for the next era, which is very admirable. SHEIN's fast fashion products focus on high quality and low price, fashionable appearance, fast new speed, cheaper than Zara and H&M, usually no more than 20 US dollars, and free shipping. Business is certainly not going to be a smooth ride. Taking its start-up wedding dress business as an example, another cross-border e-commerce company, Lanting Jishi, was established in 2007 and also focused on wedding dresses, and became famous when it went public in 2013. Later, due to changes in the market environment and other factors, he stepped down from the altar, and the current market value is 1About $200 million. 
In contrast, Apptopia data shows that in 2022, SHEIN is the world's largest shopping app with 22.9 billion times. In the same year, it also reached the peak of its valuation, exceeding $100 billion. Like the founder Xu Yangtian, SHEIN's pragmatism always allows it to get what it wants most with the highest efficiency and lowest cost when it needs it. The strict control and efficiency of all links ensure that SHEIN is cheap enough. Based on the very limited public information, look at Xu Yangtian. He was born in 1984 in Zibo, Shandong Province, and graduated from Qingdao University of Science and TechnologyBecause of his poor family, he was determined to change his fate very early. Almost all the rumors about him emphasize that he is extraordinarily diligent. For example, if you only sleep 5 hours a day, you can do almost all of the key moments mentioned by yourself. Borrowing means that although SHEIN did not follow the domestic mobile Internet, it did not miss the most valuable "China dividend". On the one hand, China, especially the Pearl River Delta region, has been a global manufacturing plant for many years, precipitating an efficient first-class chain and productivity. When Lanting was listed, SHEIN did not have its own ** chain, and relied on the 13th line in Guangzhou to list the goods. Two years later, it established its own ** chain and placed orders with some factories in Guangzhou. From 2016 to 2018, Shein's revenue was 1 billion, 3 billion, and 8 billion respectively, until 2019, when the epidemic broke out, it reached 16 billion, waiting for the cross-border e-commerce outlet. On the other hand, because of the large market, fierce competition, and smart entrepreneurs, China has accumulated a large number of leading Internet games, especially in social networking. A somewhat humorous fact can be used as evidence: after TikTok was suppressed by the United States, countless social apps were eager to try, and soon an app called Likee took the hearts of young Americans to death, and it turned out that it was produced by Huanju Times, and it was a Chinese company. The success of SHEIN's marketing has also been following up with the trend. It quickly became an Internet celebrity brand on Facebook - instead of paying a lot of money for celebrity endorsements, it put a lot of bloggers with low traffic - and the whole set of methods behind it was grown on Weibo and continued to carry forward;Later, the key role in its territorial expansion was the cooperation between SHEIN and TikTok. In fact, it may not matter whether SHEIN is a Chinese company or not, and after the TikTok incident, the Chinese public has been able to understand this. People just don't like ambiguity, especially a strong man ambiguous. People are actually looking forward to the emergence of a super company with Chinese elements - a super company, no matter how it starts, needs to go through a refining process from a single absolute advantage to a healthy ecology - maybe this is the dragon gate to become a super company. ——— end——— reason reason manager Black Bean, a well-known ** person. He used to be a senior reporter of "Chinese Entrepreneur" and the editor-in-chief of 36kr. He has written a series of plump characters, and foreseen some major events;Wandering away from the world, a prodigal ...... of business and entertainmentThe content of this account is synchronized with the ...... of dozens of mainstream ** platforms such as Toutiao, Baijia, Sohu, and NetEase