Shein

Shein is a fast-fashion online retailer founded in October 2008 in Nanjing, China, by the entrepreneur Chris Xu (Xu Yangtian). It moved its headquarters to Singapore in early 2022 while keeping its suppliers and warehouses in China, and by 2024 it reported revenue of about 38 billion dollars. Lingerie, sleepwear and swimwear are a small slice of a catalog that has added thousands of new styles a day, but at Shein's scale that slice makes it one of the largest sellers of cheap intimates in the world. In August 2026 it finally floated on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.

ZZKKO, SheInside and the wedding dress years

The company did not start as a design business. Its first name was ZZKKO, and when it registered the domain SheInside.com in March 2011 it described itself as a worldwide wedding dress company, though it sold general womenswear from the beginning. In those years it worked much like a dropshipper, buying from wholesalers in Guangzhou and selling abroad without designing anything itself.

That changed from 2012, when Shein began building its own design and supply operation. By 2016 Xu had assembled about 800 designers and prototype makers. The domain and the name were shortened to Shein along the way, and the company concentrated on customers outside China, especially in the United States and Europe.

The Shein small-batch method

Shein's contribution to retail is a production system, not a look. It forecasts trends from search and sales data, commissions a design, and orders a first run of roughly 100 pieces from a supplier. If the item sells, more follow; if it does not, the loss is tiny. The company has said it can move from prediction to finished product in as little as three days. Between July and December 2021 it added somewhere between 2,000 and 10,000 individual styles to its app every day.

For intimates, the method suits trend lingerie well and fitted lingerie badly. A lace push-up bra, a satin cami set, a mesh bodysuit, a Brazilian bikini or a multipack of thongs can be copied from a social media post, cut in S to XL and sold within weeks for a few dollars. A bra graded across dozens of band and cup combinations, with wear-testing and fit sessions, cannot be produced that way, and Shein's lingerie range tends toward stretch, wireless and letter-sized styles as a result. Its prices sit at a fraction of what mall brands such as Victoria's Secret charge, which is the whole pitch.

Warehouses in the West

To shorten delivery times Shein opened distribution centers in Whitestown, Indiana, and Markham, Ontario, in 2022. The company's growth peaked in the same period: revenue of 24 billion dollars in 2022 came with a private valuation of 100 billion dollars, a figure that fell to 66 billion in 2023 and about 30 billion by February 2025 even as sales kept rising.

Copying, labor and regulators

Shein has been accused of almost every failing a fast-fashion business can be accused of. Independent designers have repeatedly alleged that their work was copied. Investigations have documented 75-hour working weeks at supplier workshops. Tests have found unsafe levels of chemicals in some children's clothing, and the company has faced questions over cotton from Xinjiang, where forced labor has been reported. In February 2025 the European Commission requested internal documents about illegal goods on its marketplace under the Digital Services Act, and in November 2025 the French government threatened to suspend the site after child-like sex dolls were found for sale on it.

These problems bear directly on intimates. Lingerie touches skin, and chemical testing and fiber content matter more here than for a jacket. The price model also depends on volume, and the volume depends on the speed of copying.

The long road to a listing

Shein filed for a London Stock Exchange listing in June 2024. Tariff pressure on cheap parcels into the United States and regulatory scrutiny in Europe pushed the plan elsewhere, and in August 2026 the company filed to raise up to 13.86 billion Hong Kong dollars, about 1.77 billion US dollars, in Hong Kong. The offering went ahead at the end of that month at a valuation of 26.2 billion dollars, roughly a quarter of the 2022 figure.

For the lingerie business the significance of Shein is structural. It has set the floor price for trend lingerie in Western markets and made a lace bralette a disposable item for a large share of young shoppers. This encyclopedia records more than 400 Shein intimates and swim products, a sample that changes faster than any catalog can follow.

Last updated October 7, 2026