China’s Shein has taken the global fashion world by storm in recent years by combining the world of fast fashion with the even faster realm of e-commerce. But the company is quickly discovering that life in the fast lane has plenty of ups and downs, as it contends with slowing sales and a steady stream of scandals about some of its business practices that are causing its value to shrink.
The company could soon come under some of the biggest scrutiny yet in its short lifetime, with reports that it’s seeking to revive a plan to list in New York, in what would almost certainly become one of this year’s biggest listings by a Chinese company.
Shein, which sells trendy clothes to mainly Gen-Zers in more than 150 countries, has used private money to bankroll its growth so far. It is currently in talks to raise a fresh $3 billion, which would value it at $64 billion, media reported last month. That would be down by more than a third from its peak of $100 billion following a fundraising last April, which made it the world’s third largest private company behind only TikTok parent ByteDance and Elon Musk’s SpaceX.