Shein wants to move back to China to secure a Hong Kong IPO
The company has struggled to secure a home for its long-standing public ambitions.
New York looked like a no-go and London was taking too long — now, years into its scrambling efforts to secure a place on the public market, Shein is planning to move its base back to China to nail down an IPO in Hong Kong, per Bloomberg reporting.
Homeward bound
The fast-fashion giant known for ultra-affordable clothes of varying quality moved core operations to Singapore in 2021. Now, company execs are hoping a return to the country where it was founded will help get national regulators on board with its public offering plans. Previously, Shein’s efforts to IPO were met with resistance on both sides of the Atlantic, as US and UK lawmakers raised concerns around forced labor and other issues.
With the de minimis trading exemption sewn shut, American shoppers learned to live without cheap Chinese imports... for a month or two at least.
Now, traffic to Temu’s and Shein’s websites is on the up once again, as the two rivals saw site visits rise in July, data from Similarweb shows.
Shein’s 85 million figure — the most it’s clocked since at least February 2024 — was slightly outshone by Temu. Indeed, just as it looked like the two might be leveling out in June, desktop and mobile visits to temu.com more than doubled, with some arguing that Temu, owned by PDD Holdings, might already be benefiting from Amazon pulling out of Google Shopping ads last month.
Can Americans live without $1 necklaces, $2 phone cases, and $4 T-shirts? The answer, at least for now, seems to be no — great news for Shein’s hopes that it can finally carve out a place on the stock market.
