Shein has filed an application to list on the New York Stock Exchange

Shein, a Chinese fast fashion giant, has confidentially filed an application for an IPO on the New York Stock Exchange. This IPO could well be one of the most important of this decade in terms of capitalization and valuation.

Shein, the pioneer of fast fashion, aims for the heights

American investment banks Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase and Morgan Stanley were tasked by Shein with drafting the offer. According to several people familiar with the matter, this introduction “ could take place in 2024 “. Founded in 2008, the newcomer to online fashion came to shake up the cards in a clothing sector dominated by major ready-to-wear brands like Zara or H&M.

The company is known for being one of the first to leverage data analytics to predict customer demand and adjust production accordingly. This is how it stood out from its competitors throughout the 2010s, reaching a turnover of $23 billion and profits of $800 million in 2022. Building on these results, the firm raised $2 billion in May 2023, valuing it at $66 billion. However, its valuation was reduced by a third compared to its previous funding round.

Despite everything, Shein does not give up and sees things big. As mentioned by Siècle Digital At the start of the month, the group was seeking to be valued at between $80 and $90 billion, a much higher range than that estimated by potential investors, between $50 and $60 billion. If it were to reach such a valuation, the IPO of the fast fashion specialist would be one of the largest operations of its kind in many years. Even the highly anticipated Arm IPO only valued the company “at” $54 billion.

If Shein’s financial health is no longer in doubt, the company must now face competition. Certainly, the firm has been able to carve out a place for itself in the world of fashion thanks to its well-established data analysis techniques, nevertheless, several companies have developed similar strategies. Thus, Temu, the subsidiary of the Chinese e-commerce company Pinduoduo, has become its fiercest competitor, leading aggressive campaigns to make itself known in Western markets.

In the United States, the two companies are already facing each other without restraint: the challenger Temu accuses the champion of dissuading suppliers from working with it. Furthermore, during the end-of-year holidays and Black Friday, the two e-commerce players were outclassed by the sector’s juggernaut, Amazon, despite the multiplication of their efforts to strengthen their presence across the Atlantic.