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Profits at Shein’s UK business rose by almost 60 per cent last year as sales surpassed £2bn for the first time, underlining the online fast-fashion retailer’s British growth as it tries to secure a London listing.
Singapore-based Shein reported a 56.5 per cent increase in pre-tax profits to £38.2mn for the year to the end of December for its UK unit, while revenue jumped 32 per cent, according to filings at Companies House.
The group had almost three times as many employees during the period, predominantly in marketing roles, totalling 91 staff in the UK. It said milestones during the year included a pop-up shop in Liverpool and a Christmas bus tour across 12 UK cities, as well as the launch of two new offices in the country.
Shein has pioneered a new model of ecommerce that has disrupted the retail industry over the past five years, by sending Chinese-made goods directly to people’s homes. Cheap prices — its women’s vests cost as little as £1.20 — and an advertising blitz have helped Shein boom since the pandemic, including in the UK and Europe.
It has sought to capitalise on its growth with a stock market float, but has struggled to win the backing of regulators for a listing in the US and UK.
An IPO in the UK could still materialise, however. Shein confidentially filed for a listing in Hong Kong earlier this summer, in a move designed to pressure UK regulators into approving a London listing.
Shein filed for a UK float last year, but UK and Chinese regulators failed to agree on appropriate language to be used in the risk disclosure section of its prospectus. The differences related particularly to Shein’s supply chain exposure to the politically sensitive Xinjiang region, where China has been accused of human rights abuses against the indigenous Uyghur population, which the country denies.
Shein has previously said that it has a “zero-tolerance policy” regarding forced labour.
Companies such as Shein and rival Temu have switched their focus to Europe in recent months as the environment in the US — a key market — has become more hostile because of President Donald Trump’s tariffs and the removal of the low value goods exemption in the US, known as “de minimis”, for parcels arriving from China and Hong Kong.
Shein’s monthly active users rose between 13 per cent and 20 per cent in the UK, Germany and France according to data from market intelligence company Sensor Tower.
