Chinese online-only fashion brand SHEIN has claimed the top spot of shopping charts from retail giants such as Amazon, H&M and Inditex.
According to data presented by OnlineCasinoMaxi.de, SHEIN has become the leading shopping app in combined downloads from the Google Play Store and Apple App Store worldwide with an estimated 17.52 million downloads in July 2021 – more than double of Amazon Shopping’s total downloads.
Founded in 2008, SHEIN was originally known as SheInside and was originally a wedding dress business. The brand then expanded to general womenswear and rebranded to SHEIN which the company believes was easier to remember and search for online.
In more recent times, the global pandemic that dominated the landscape of 2020 catapulted SHEIN to global recognition and fast made it a force in the e-commerce industry. As of October 2020, SHEIN was ranked as the world’s largest retail-only fashion company according to Euromonitor International.
Its popularity is evident in its app’s usage, which now regularly competes with retail giants Amazon for the top spot of shopping charts. In comparison, Amazon’s shopping app combined global downloads amounted to just 7.46 million downloads.
According to the brand, data-driven approach, social media savviness and user experience innovations are driving success for SHEIN.
SHEIN uses an in-house algorithm that allows them to mine the web to find out which fashion items are trending in search engines as well as which products potential customers are responding to from competitor’s websites.
This data is then used by SHEIN’s design team to develop new items in almost real-time which according to sources allows them to drop as many as 500 products a day.
In comparison, direct competitors such as Boohoo have the same amount in the span of an entire week.
SHEIN also claims to leverage social media to the fullest and better than a lot of its competitors and has proved to be a huge success amongst Gen Z population who they target on platforms such as Tiktok.
In July 2021, SHEIN was the leading brand globally on Tiktok based on the number of mentions with 6,625 for the month. SHIEN’s official Tiktok account was also the third-fastest growing brand on the platform, recording 600 per cent growth in July 2021.
SHEIN’s effective use of influencer marketing is also evident on the platform Instagram. According to data, SHEIN was ranked as the third-leading brand on Instagram based on the number of mentions from English-speaking influencers at an estimated 27,400.
