Shein, A Fast Fashion E-Commerce Giant, Has Expanded Its Territory To Test Offline Flash Stores Around The World

The post epidemic era has given birth to a surge in global online shopping demand, and China's cross-border e-commerce development has entered a golden age. According to the statistics of the General Administration of customs, in 2021, the import and export scale of China's cross-border e-commerce will reach 1.98 trillion yuan, an increase of 15%. Among them, the scale of overseas trade is 1.44 trillion yuan, with an increase of 24.5%.

Among the cross-border e-commerce brands, China's fast fashion cross-border e-commerce giant "sheen" has made great progress all the way. In 2021 alone, it has generated more than 100 billion yuan of revenue.

In particular, in the list of social media influence of Q2 overseas brands in 2022, sheen is firmly at the first place, surpassing Alibaba international station, express express and Jingdong, and its global influence has attracted many people's eyes.

The myth of sheen

In 2020, sheen, which has been unknown for a long time, frequently appeared on the Chinese mass media platform. At that time, it was already a unicorn valued at $15 billion and was rapidly sweeping the global fast fashion market.

Founded by Xu Yangtian in 2008 and headquartered in Nanjing, sheen is a cross-border B2C fast fashion e-commerce company. TA uses Internet thinking to do clothing business. It mainly sells clothing, accessories, shoes, bags and other products in Europe, America, the Middle East, India, Southeast Asia and other overseas consumer markets, covering 220 countries and regions.

The revenue of Sheen has increased by more than 100% for eight consecutive years; In 2021, the sales volume of sheen will reach 15.7 billion US dollars; In the first half of this year, Sheen's Gmv has exceeded $16 billion, with a year-on-year growth rate of more than 50%. It is expected to complete the annual sales target of $30 billion ahead of schedule. The news of overseas listing of Sheen has been heard more than once. It is reported that the IPO will be carried out in the United States as soon as 2024.

As of October 2022, Amazon ranked the second in Apple's shopping category. But in the second quarter of this year, sheen app downloads surpassed Amazon.

From the perspective of financing process, sheen obtained a round of financing of US $5 million from CFA as early as 2013; Since then, it has completed several rounds of financing, including IDG, Sequoia China, Shunwei capital, tiger Global Fund, etc. The rapid growth of Shanghai's capital market share has been realized.

In April 2022, sheen completed the f round of financing, with a financing scale of more than 1 billion US dollars. It is reported that after the round of financing, the valuation of Sheen has reached 100 billion US dollars. Such valuations put sheen in third place on the global list of Unicorn start-ups, after $140 billion in byte hopping and $100.3 billion in SpaceX.

The success of sheen is hard to replicate in the global test of offline flash stores

The reason why Sheen has become popular all over the world in just a few years is accompanied by a number of decisive factors. In addition to the support of multi-party capital and excellent achievements over the years, it is also inseparable from the precise positioning and marketing ability of the brand itself.

Targeting the consumer groups of generation Z

The target customer group of sheen is Z generation group. With its fast and efficient product development speed, new frequency, total number of new SKUs and low price, sheen is fully competitive with its competitors.

It is learned that sheen uses big data to predict user demand and the trend of the current season. It launches 6000 SKUs a day, and its product design speed is about 7 days. Its efficiency is far higher than that of traditional fast fashion brands such as H & M and Zara, which are highly dependent on offline channels.

#Set off the upsurge of independent station

At the beginning of its establishment, sheen chose to build its own website, and achieved customers by advertising in Google, Facebook and other channels. Sheen is no longer satisfied with the single category of clothing. It is expanding its territory and is developing into a platform based e-commerce with multiple brands and diversified products.

According to incomplete statistics, Sheen has more than 10 brands, including beauty brand sheglam, underwear brand luvlette, high-end clothing series motf, the latest environmental protection clothing series evolusein, young fast fashion romwe, shoe brand cuccoo, pet brand petsin, sports fashion gliwmode, sheen x, etc, Set up independent website for its brands.

Independent station has also become one of the core competitiveness of global brands. In addition to quickly obtaining the first-hand important data from consumers, it can quickly produce products that are more in line with young people's consumption preferences, but also improve brand awareness and user loyalty.

In addition, exchange will also be used to sell second-hand products of Shein. The aim is to provide customers with a one-stop platform to meet the needs of the community, make them active participants in circular fashion, and promote the benefits of buying second-hand clothing. However, sheen exchange is currently only open to customers in the U.S. region and will expand to other markets around the world next year.

#Play with social media

Since the social media has been very active in promoting its own social media content.

Sheen may be one of the companies that have tried to promote KOL in the early days. Since 2011, it has established the marketing model of online celebrity recommendation from KOL, and has carried out publicity and promotion through Facebook, twitter, instagram and other international social platforms to achieve in-depth cooperation, and to jointly create co branded cooperation funds with well-known designers.

#Global water test flash shop

In 2020, when the major fast fashion brands closed their stores for survival due to the epidemic, sheen, which had no offline stores, broke through and passed the global test of offline flash stores.

Since 2018, Sheen has started the pace of global expansion, covering the United States, Mexico, France, the United Kingdom, Japan and other countries and regions, in order to strengthen the offline contact with fans from all over the world.

From the first stop in New York in 2018 to the latest stop in Osaka, Sheen has attracted a lot of local consumers' enthusiastic pursuit wherever they go, which is not affected by the epidemic.

On October 22, sheen opened a three-month offline experience store "sheen pop Osaka" in shinzhai bridge, Osaka, Japan. There was a long queue on the opening day. The flash store fully combines local characteristics with a large number of social elements suitable for young people.

It is reported that the store only provides fitting services and does not sell goods directly. Consumers can try on and experience about 800 pieces of goods in the store. After the experience, they can place an order through the sheen e-commerce platform, and then deliver the goods to their homes through the platform. This practice can effectively reduce the return rate of orders in the Japanese market.

Sheen has introduced a reservation system in its Miami flash stores, and as a result, more than 3000 bookings were sold out within two hours.

Sheen directly enters the local market through offline flash stores, so that consumers in different regions can feel the products and brands more intuitively, and at the same time, it can lead the offline passenger flow back to the online market to complete the online momentum. On the one hand, the brand can accurately grasp the preferences of young consumers; On the other hand, it is based on the reputation and popularity accumulated by the successful online community marketing and cost-effective products since the establishment of sheen.

So far, Sheen has not opened any offline permanent stores, which will be a required course in the future.