Shein’s global PR director on scaling fast-fashion and digital influence

Shein isn’t just a fast-fashion brand—it’s the fast-fashion brand. With over 600,000 items listed at any given time, the Chinese ecommerce giant churns out trends at breakneck speed and rock-bottom prices.

But its rapid rise comes with a cost. The company was said to emit 16.7 million metric tons of carbon dioxide in 2023—equalling the amount four coal power plants produce in a year. Shein has also come under fire for other allegations including high levels of microplastic pollution and reports of overworked staff in tough conditions.

At the onset of Shein’s boom—particularly during the pandemic years where online retail spiked—the heavily scrutinised company seemed to be embroiled in a reputational crisis and perhaps continues to be. Yet, there is no denying the number of global customers who continually flock to the site—quickly allowing the brand to becoming the world’s fastest-growing fashion retailer in market share.

Leveraging real-time insights

The reason for Shein’s speedy uptick is rooted in its business model which enables it to keep costs low. At the recent Campaign360 event in Singapore, global PR director of Shein Charlene Lee, shed light on this very model that catapulted Shein to quick fame.

Charlene Lee at Campaign360

Firstly, the company uses real-time insights to inform its clothing styles, allowing it to produce new designs at a faster rate than rivals H&M and Zara.

“We look at how our products are performing in order to inform our decisions of what we sell, how much we produce, where we sell, and to whom we sell,” said Lee. “All of this is made possible because we use on-demand production. We're producing 100 to 200 pieces of any product at launch for the entire world. It is this small minimum order quantity (MOQ) that allows us to respond in an agile way and tailor our products to target audiences.”

This on-demand production method, according to Lee, leads to less textile waste as the company isn’t “buying raw materials for products they are never going to sell”. Because of lower inventory, she said that it doesn’t spend on warehouses and disposal of stock, and instead passes on this cost-saving to the consumer.

“Shein’s excess inventory is kept at low single digits throughout the entire year, compared to the industry average of up to 40%,” Lee asserted.

Finally, the retailer’s unique online-only offering means that it saves on overheads associated with brick-and-mortar operations.

“We're not at the mercy of landlords… opening a brick-and-mortar shop in Singapore can cost anywhere from $50,000 to $100,000 depending on factors like location, size and furnishings,” said Lee. “On average, a [fashion retail] company holding a million dollars in excess stock could have to spend anything from $200,000 to $300,000 per year to deal with it, and that covers costs like storage insurance, potential obsolescence and lost opportunities for capital investment.”

She concluded that these factors are just a few that allow Shein to price their items as such. However, Lee’s presentation didn’t note the hidden trade-offs of Shein’s low prices such as alleged 75-hour work weeks for staff on minimum wage, or the environmental cost of an online-only business that ships its items around the world.

Shein’s IRL experiences and influencer strategy

Because Shein is an online-only brand, it relies on pop-ups and event collaborations to connect with consumers face-to-face. Lee said these pop-ups—which take place all over the world—enable consumers to “experience the Shein lifestyle”. The limited time frame on pop-ups also add exclusivity for consumers, and often draw long lines, naturally leading to social-media engagement. 

“Our pop-ups are a hotbed for user generated content,” said Lee. “For us, the pop-ups are not just about driving sales, they are about brand experience. We don't often offer sales on [pop-up] sites. What we do is drive people back to the website to complete their sales.”

Lee is also a huge proponent of the cost-saving nature of pop-ups compared with permanent brick-and-mortar stores. Whether the pop-up is in a travelling bus, at the beach, or at a music festival, this model offers the brand flexibility in terms of venue selection, fees, and theme without having to hire permanent staff.  

A Shein pop-up in Australia

Incidentally, pop-ups are also part of Shein’s influencer strategy as many look to the brand to launch their influencer career due to the lower barrier for entry.

Lee segues into Shein’s influencer strategy, and emphasises that the retailer doesn’t often rely on “mega celebrity influencers”, and instead prefers to engage nano and micro influencers.

“Nano and micro influencers are seen as very much more relatable,” she said. “They are trustworthy. Our followers tend to tend to believe in what they are selling a lot more, because they see credibility behind their lifestyle. With smaller influences, the engagement rate tends to be up to three times that of the mega and celebrity-level influencers.”

Once again, circling back to Shein’s cost-saving strategies, nano and micro influencers make sense in its media strategy. In fact, Lee said that there are many influencers in their canon who are unpaid as they are breaking into the scene and leveraging Shein to gain followers.  

“The conversion rates of the micro and nano influencers average out to be about 22%. That’s extremely high when you consider the number of people who are leveraging Shein for content,” she added. “We actually have very specific guidelines in terms of what can and cannot be said [by influencers]. Mostly what cannot be said. We do not want to end up in a situation where we have influencers who start creating a narrative that is completely unaligned to what the brand represents.”

For instance, the #Sheinhaul trend which became a big part of the brand’s initial visibility, became a reputational issue for the brand and Lee’s team worked hard to nip it in the bud.

“The trend became a little bit of a nightmare because it was all about overconsumption, and that is not what Shein is actually about. We do on-demand production. We are most keen on ensuring that people have the freedom to express themselves through fashion,” said Lee. “It isn't about emptying out boxes and boxes of product.”

Despite Shein’s mastery of production efficiency and brand-creator partnerships, its long-term brand story may ultimately be written by the very issues it tries hardest to edit out.

For more on Campaign360, see the highlights here.