It is not immediately clear whether an overseas IPO application by Shein would require the approval of mainland regulators.
Fast-fashion company Shein is looking to go public on the London Stock Exchange, an offering that could value the company at around US$63.9 billion, the South China Morning Post reported, citing UK media. The company is reportedly aiming to raise US$1.3 billion from the IPO.
If the offering materializes, Shein could become the second-highest valued Chinese unicorn, behind ByteDance. Shein was similarly valued at US$64 billion in January 2023, down from its peak of US$100 billion in April 2022.
Due to rising US-China tensions, Shein reportedly moved its IPO plans from New York to London, the Financial Times reported last month, though the company’s executive chair Donald Tang declined to confirm the move at the time. This decision followed the firm moving its Nanjing, China headquarters to Singapore in 2021 for similar reasons.
It is unclear if the company needs approval from Chinese regulators for the IPO. New rules set by the China Securities Regulatory Commission require companies listing overseas to register their intent with the agency and get approval from the relevant regulators in their respective industries.
Shein was founded in the city of Nanjing in 2008 and has since evolved from a low-cost Chinese apparel merchant to a global fashion juggernaut, climbing in sales from $10 billion in 2020 (according to Bloomberg) to a whopping $100 billion in 2022.
Its biggest selling point is the low pricing of clothes that are shipped to more than 150 countries and regions worldwide. The business model works like Amazon—a sprawling online marketplace brings together about 6,000 clothing factories in China under Shein’s label, while internal management software collects near-instant data about which items are selling and which aren’t to visibly boost the popular items. According to an investigation by Rest of World, Shein added anywhere between 2,000 and 10,000 individual styles to its app each day between July and December of 2021.
Source: Tech in Asia, Time
