They looked better than what I had bought by intentionally clicking on the cheapest items, so I guessed $500, at least. Boohoo, a UK-based company, and Fashion Nova, based in the US, are part of the same trend.Īfter Kelly finished filming, Lacy asked me how much I thought all the pieces-21 of them, plus a decorative snow globe-cost on Romwe’s website. “They don’t care that Vogue doesn’t think it’s a cool piece,” she said. Connie Chan, an investor at Andreessen Horowitz who invested in a Shein competitor called Cider, told me that Shein represents a newer phase of fast fashion: Now, what appears on runways and in fashion magazines matters less, and people look to one another for what to wear. By manufacturing clothing near its headquarters in Spain and streamlining the supply chain, it offered up these already proven styles in a matter of weeks at prices that felt shockingly low. In the 1990s, before Kelly was born, Zara popularized a model of borrowing design ideas from whatever was getting attention on runways. While Shein has collaborated with major celebrities and influencers (Katy Perry, Lil Nas X, Addison Rae), its sweet spot seems to be the ones with medium-size followings. In exchange, the brand gets relatively low-cost marketing, in the places where its target audience, teens and twentysomethings, prefers to hang out. She wouldn’t name her fee, though she said she makes more in a couple hours of video work than some of her friends with normal after-school jobs make in a week. This strategy, HypeAuditor says, has made it the most talked-about brand of any kind on Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok.Īlong with the free clothes, Romwe also pays Kelly a flat rate for her posts. They in turn share discount codes with their followers and earn a commission on the sales. According to Nick Baklanov, a marketing and research specialist at a company called HypeAuditor, Shein is unusual in the industry for the enormous number of influencers it sends free clothing to. On the ground lay a mound of shirts, skirts, and dresses from Romwe.įor years, Shein’s public face has taken the form of people like Kelly, who make up a federation of influencers filming hauls for the company. There was a Christmas tree, a cat tower, and, in the middle of the landing, an iPad mounted on a tripod and haloed with a ring light. She skipped off to the living room to dance around-a warm-up-then led me upstairs to the carpeted second-floor landing where she does her shoots. People have watched it more than 40,000 times the argyle sweater is sold out. The camera is trained on her midriff, while, in voice-over, her tongue makes juicy sounds. In a video I first watched last fall, she twirls around in her backyard, in front of a tree with golden leaves, wearing a $9 cropped argyle sweater. A couple of years ago, she started filming hauls for a Shein-owned brand called Romwe she posts a new one about once a month. On Instagram, she has 340,000 followers on YouTube, she has 1.6 million. Kelly, a redhead with the vibe of a glamorous Cabbage Patch Kid, is famous for ASMR content: tapping on boxes, tracing words in the snow outside her house. One federal trade regulator told me he had never heard of the brand, and then, that evening, emailed: “Postscript-not only did my 13-year-old daughter know the company (Shein) but was wearing a pair of their corduroys tonight.” It occurred to me that if I wanted to understand Shein, I should start with the people who seemed to know it best: its teenage influencers.Ġne bright afternoon last December, a 16-year-old named Makenna Kelly greeted me at the door of her house in a quiet suburban neighborhood of Fort Collins, Colorado. Mike Karanikolas, a co-CEO, responded, “You’re talking about the Chinese company, right? I’m not sure how to pronounce it-s-h-e-i-n.” (It’s SHE-in.) He dismissed the threat. In an earnings call last year, a financial analyst asked executives at the fashion brand Revolve about competition from Shein. Its CEO and founder, Chris Xu, declined to be interviewed for this article.Īs I began looking into Shein, it seemed almost as if the brand existed in some liminal space occupied by people in their teens and twenties and no one else. Being privately held, it doesn’t disclose financial information. Most of its suppliers are located in Guangzhou, the Pearl River port city about 80 miles northwest of Hong Kong.īeyond that, the company has shared surprisingly little information with the public. Here’s some of what’s known about Shein: It’s a Chinese-born company with nearly 10,000 employees and offices in China, Singapore, and the US.
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