Faster fashion
Gen Z has a new favorite shopping app — Shein.
The company, founded in 2008 in China, has exploded into the world of fast fashion, with Google data showing it's surpassed other brands like H&M, Zara and ASOS in terms of search interest. It's also held the second spot in the iOS App Store Shopping category for much of this year, even overtaking Amazon briefly.
Shein x TikTok
Shein makes the world of fast fashion, pioneered in the late 90s by Zara, H&M and others, look glacial. "Fast fashion" meant that designs from fashion shows and runways could make it into stores in just a few weeks. Shein takes this a step further. If a top or garment design goes viral on TikTok, Shein can ramp up production almost instantly thanks to its tight control of production, and relatively small initial batches of items. That supply chain, coupled with super-low prices and endless virality on TikTok, is a powerful feedback loop.
The sheer scale and speed of Shein's operations are quite hard to get your ahead around. Its website has a feature that lets you filter which products arrived on the site by which day (there are no physical Shein stores). 8,895 products were added yesterday. 9,634 were added the day before.
Secrets and sustainability
Shein reportedly racked up more than $10bn of sales last year, but otherwise relatively little is known about the company, its operations, its owners or how sustainable its production is. Its supply chain is impressive, but not very transparent.
