Chinese Cross-border Fast Fashion E-commerce platform Shein has faced criticism for selling products overseas at low prices without authorization from Adidas and Puma. The two internationally renowned sports brands are considering taking legal action in response.
According to a report from the German magazine “WirtschaftsWoche” on September 22, Shein’s German website (de.shein.com) recently listed two Adidas shoes: the Adidas shower sandals and Samba sneakers, which Shein referred to as “Adidas classic boots.” On the Shein website, the Samba sneakers were priced at only 62.29 euros, while the same model on Adidas’s official store was priced at 120 euros.
In response, an Adidas spokesperson stated, “Adidas itself does not sell any products on the Shein platform, nor does it allow the platform to resell Adidas products.”
The report from “WirtschaftsWoche” mentioned that, on Shein’s European website (eur.shein.com), besides selling Adidas products, there are also a large number of products from Puma at lower prices.
A spokesperson for Puma commented, “We have taken measures, and if Shein does not proactively remove those unauthorized products from the website, we will reserve the right to take legal action.”
Puma’s CEO Arne Freundt also mentioned that the sales quality on the Shein platform does not align with Puma’s brand positioning.
According to the mainland media “Securities Market Weekly,” the China-based internet retailer Shein quietly filed for a US IPO on November 27, 2023, and is expected to go public at some point in 2024 with a valuation of $66 billion.
However, the US government has recently decided to significantly increase import tariffs on Chinese products. In addition to the tariff increase, the US government has announced that it is exploring new measures to curb the abuse of the low-value exemption system by Chinese e-commerce platforms like Shein and Pinduoduo Holdings’ Temu to send large quantities of cheap goods into the United States.
According to a report in Singapore’s “The Straits Times,” Marcelo Claure, vice chairman of the Shein group, emphasized at an international conference recently that “Shein is not a Chinese company, it is a Singaporean company leveraging China’s manufacturing industry and supply chain.”
In reality, the fast fashion retailer Shein, together with Temu under Pinduoduo, AliExpress under Alibaba, and TikTok’s e-commerce business TikTok Shop, are known as the “Four Little Dragons of China’s E-commerce” that have received support from the Chinese Communist government.
According to “Securities Market Weekly,” Shein is a fast fashion e-commerce platform founded by Chris Xu in Nanjing in 2008. The company mainly sells clothing, accessories, and shoes, but also includes home goods, beauty, health, and pet products. Although headquartered in China, the company primarily serves customers in the United States, Europe, and Australia.
Shein is controlled by its parent company Nanjing Lengtian Information Technology Co., Ltd., but its ownership remains undisclosed. It is still a private company with four major shareholders: JAFCO Asia, IDG Capital, Sequoia Capital China, and Tiger Global Management.