The Shein Reckoning

Shein's business model is engineered for speed: the company uses data on online demand to commission small initial batches, reportedly as few as one or two hundred pieces, from a dense network of supplier workshops around Guangzhou, then reorders the styles that sell. Rest of World found that between July and December 2021 Shein added between two thousand and ten thousand new styles to its site each day. In November 2021 the Swiss NGO Public Eye reported that workers at supplier workshops it visited routinely worked about seventy-five hours a week, often without contracts, in buildings with barred windows and missing emergency exits. Later investigations by broadcasters, NGOs, and a U.S. House committee raised further concerns about wages, cotton sourcing, product safety, and copying of independent designers' work, which Shein has faced in numerous lawsuits. The company abandoned plans to list in New York and then London amid regulatory scrutiny, and on September 1, 2026, completed an initial public offering in Hong Kong at a valuation of roughly $26 billion—a fraction of the $100 billion private valuation it reached in 2022.