Shein Wants to Sell Everything to Everyone

Jasmin Malik Chua
·6 min read

Shein wants to be more than a fashion brand.

The Chinese e-tail Goliath announced Thursday that it is expanding its product offerings to include home appliances, electronics, kitchenware and DIY products. Need a wall-mounted waterproof phone storage shelf? Shein’s got you covered for $5. What about a silicone “jawline exerciser” that comes in six colors? It’s yours for $1.70. Does your kitty have a grudge against your furniture? Keep her claws occupied with a sisal scratching mat for $7.60. “Honestly, my cats used it instantly,” one happy customer says.

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The Singapore-headquartered firm is able to contain such multitudes by cribbing a page from the Amazon/Alibaba/Temu playbook: opening its platform to global brands and third-party sellers. So far it’s debuted the marketplace concept in the United States and Brazil, with other countries to follow. The idea, it said, is to allow external sellers to leverage Shein’s hefty customer base while meeting “increasing demands for diversified products…and much quicker fulfillment time.”

Shoes by Skechers will soon sit alongside $4.10 BBQ skewers and $3.10 banana-shaped hamster hammocks. So will breastfeeding products from Lansinoh. The Nanjing-founded company, which is valued at some $65 billion, also said that it will be collaborating with “prominent” global multi-label boutiques to bring an “extensive” range of fashion, beauty and lifestyle brands to its platform.

Expanding into new categories is a “natural evolution” for Shein, said Neil Saunders, managing director at GlobalData Retail, a market analytics firm.

“The business still has potential in apparel, but its rapid growth means that it is hitting a ceiling in terms of its ability to deliver constant strings of punchy numbers,” he said. “Given that it has the audience and has already expanded into some non-clothing categories, it will hope that adding more items to the marketplace deepens its share of wallet among customers.”

Whether the IPO aspirant will succeed in its bid remains to be seen, however. Saunders said that going up against Temu, which has shelled out a fortune on advertising and acquiring customers, including a Super Bowl ad this year, will be challenging, particularly in markets where spending is slowing. Amazon, too, will be a “tough nut to crack” given its better reputation for quality and ultra-fast and convenient delivery, he said.

But copying the Amazon model has its pitfalls, said Michelle Gabriel, director of the sustainable fashion graduate program at Glasgow Caledonian New York College.

“The practices of Amazon are already fast at the expense of many other considerations including ethics and emissions, already highlight quality control issues and already are low price-focused,” Gabriel said. “Adding another player seeking to compete on those same metrics will absolutely deteriorate further market conditions, working conditions and sustainability considerations for the space.”

U.S. lawmakers already have Shein in their sights for potentially harboring forced Uyghur labor from China’s Xinjiang region in its supply chain—something that the Romwe owner vigorously denies—and allegedly using the de minimis provision to fly under the regulatory radar. Environmental activists have also excoriated the company for selling clothing containing hazardous chemicals at levels above European Union regulatory limits. And try as it might, it still can’t shake allegations of sweatshop-like conditions at its factories and warehouses. Throwing open the floodgates to other companies will make oversight more difficult, as Amazon, which is engaged in a game of Whac-A-Mole with misbehaving third-party vendors, is well aware.

“I wonder what types of agreements on sustainability standards exist?” wondered Luke Smitham, manager and fashion sector lead at Kumi Consulting, a British firm focused on responsible supply chains. “Many large e-commerce platforms require brands they sell to confirm they abide by certain labor, human [and] environmental rights, and vice versa those brands chose platforms carefully to an extent to avoid to be seen to be sold by unethical platforms—in as much as they can control that.”

“Admittedly, Amazon has had and continues [to have] issues but they do have a huge sustainability team now and are beholden to a number of stakeholders,” he added. “Does Shein?”

Molly Miao, chief operating officer at Shein, said in a statement that the fast-fashion phenom is committed to providing its customers with high-quality products at affordable prices—and its expansion into new categories reflects that.

“Through our collaborations with these curated brands, we not only highlight the distinctive value of Shein’s newly launched marketplace, but also demonstrate our dedication to customer satisfaction and our mission to make fashion and lifestyle products accessible to everyone,” Miao said.

Amazon has come under fire for what Gabriel describes as a “monopolistic hold” on Americans with the sheer size of its inventory, much to the detriment of brick-and-mortar businesses. Shein’s ambition to go toe to toe with the Everything Store will only tighten the ratchet on margins. Already, the former Rolling Stones collaborator is toasting its move into “full category” with “Summer Sale” discounts of up to 90 percent. Among the deals? A pair of ombre-lens sunglasses for $1.16, a pair of men’s knitted-upper sneakers for $9.06 and a tropical-print jumpsuit for $9.75.

“We will likely see customer-facing prices continue to fall with the addition of Shein and more competition, but this isn’t a win for almost anyone else in the greater market, value and supply chains for these companies,” she said. “Workers are grossly marginalized by both Amazon and Shein and greater pressure for faster, cheaper, and more selection will only exacerbate this issue [and] amplify already growing emissions, overconsumption and waste dumping, not to mention congestion in cities and transport systems to get these goods where they need to go.”

In essence, Gabriel said, Shein is “leveraging fashion’s destructive and toxic business model built on speed, price and novelty, which has had catastrophic effects on the fashion market to other markets.”

Shein already pumps out some 6,000 new items every single day for a total of 600,000 on its website at any one time. By its own admission, it generated 57 percent more product in 2022 compared with the year before, producing 52 percent more carbon emissions in the process. It maintains, however, that it manufactures its products in small batches of between 50 and 100, creating little deadstock inventory and therefore waste.

Still, Saunders thinks the market can only bear so much. How many $3.99 bikini tops does one person need? Or portable bathtubs ($48.99, with a quick-ship option), for that matter?

“There is a sense that Chinese online firms are flooding the market with cheap products, but even at the very best prices there are still limits as to how much people want to buy,” he said. “We will reach a point where there isn’t room for everyone to succeed and produce great growth numbers.”