Guangzhou's richest man appoints Son Masayoshi's deputy

Author | Huang Yu

Editor | Zhang Xiaoling

After nearly a decade of establishment, SHEIN has grown from an unknown fast fashion women's clothing independent website to a globally renowned cross-border e-commerce platform. It is also the fourth largest unicorn in terms of valuation, second only to ByteDance, SpaceX, and Ant Group.

With the rise of SHEIN, the 39-year-old founder, Xu Yangtian, has entered the list of China's richest people and become the richest person in Guangzhou. In the "2023 New Fortune 500 Rich List," Xu Yangtian ranks 14th with a net worth of 112 billion yuan, making him the youngest among the top 30.

No one can ignore the brilliance of SHEIN anymore. Xu Yangtian also wants to go further. Therefore, he needs to build a strong, international, and capital-savvy team to help the platform evolve and soar, just like what Jack Ma did for the start-up Alibaba and Mark Zuckerberg did for Facebook in its early days.

Earlier this year, Xu Yangtian recruited Marcelo Claure, the former Chief Operating Officer of SoftBank, as the Chairman of SHEIN Latin America. After nearly 8 months, on October 6th, Claure was successfully promoted from a regional leader to the Vice Chairman of SHEIN Group, and he will help SHEIN expand globally.

In addition to the founding team members, SHEIN needs to build a more mature management team to enhance its competitiveness, break through the bottleneck of business growth, and quickly succeed in its capitalization strategy.

Xu Yangtian, the low-key richest person in Guangzhou, is destined to step onto a larger international stage with the success of China's supply chain digitization, competing with global e-commerce platforms.

Bringing in Capital Experts

Claure is a star investor in the international capital market. He has been working at SoftBank since 2013 and is considered a "right-hand man" to Masayoshi Son.

During his time at SoftBank, one of the well-known cases where he helped turn around a company that SoftBank invested in was the rescue of Sprint. He led the merger of telecommunications service providers T-Mobile and Sprint, rewriting the entire telecommunications market landscape in North America.

When Claure chose to join SHEIN to oversee the Latin American business, it was consistent with his decision to focus a significant amount of time and capital in his hometown of Latin America after leaving SoftBank.

Xu Yangtian, the founder and CEO of SHEIN, also warmly welcomed Claure's joining, stating, "During the rapid advancement of SHEIN's Latin American business, we are excited to welcome Marcelo to the SHEIN team."

At that time, SHEIN was planning to pilot the platformization model in Brazil and other places, and they needed someone familiar with the local market to help open up the situation. Claire's joining undoubtedly injected a shot in the arm for SHEIN's expansion, not only because of his deep connections in Latin America, but also because he came with funding. As an investor, Claire invested $100 million in SHEIN.

And the investment amount is still increasing. In Claire's promotion announcement, SHEIN pointed out that since joining in January this year, Claire has been responsible for overseeing the launch of SHEIN's platform model in Brazil and has committed to invest $150 million to localize SHEIN's manufacturing business in Brazil.

It is reported that Brazil is the first country outside of China where SHEIN has established a local factory. This will become another important production base for SHEIN.

In the past half a year, it is believed that the collaboration between Claire, an investment expert, and the Xuyang team has been successful. Claire said, "This transition (to serve as Vice Chairman of SHEIN Group) reflects my stronger commitment to SHEIN's vision and business model."

Donald Tang, Chairman of SHEIN, said that Claire's leadership and relationships have played an important role in strengthening SHEIN's business development and strategic initiatives in key markets. In the future, SHEIN will further expand its market model, localization strategy, and other key initiatives in 150 markets worldwide.

Donald Tang actually joined SHEIN not long before Claire, in November last year, but he is also skilled in capital operations.

Donald Tang, from Shanghai, began his career in the United States and previously worked for the well-known investment bank Bear Stearns, where he served as Vice Chairman and CEO of the Asian company, leading and facilitating multiple heavyweight transactions. Shortly after Bear Stearns was acquired by JPMorgan Chase in 2008, he left the company.

Therefore, when the news of Donald Tang joining SHEIN came out, some people also believed that this was a move made by Xuyang Tian to promote SHEIN's overseas listing.

Rapid Expansion towards Listing

SHEIN was founded in Nanjing by Xuyang Tian, Molly Miao, Maggie Gu, and Tony Ren. Xuyang Tian serves as CEO, Molly Miao as COO, Maggie Gu is responsible for product development, and Tony Ren is responsible for supply chain management.

With its innovative flexible on-demand supply model in the fashion industry, after ten years of development, SHEIN has surpassed Zara and H&M to become the world's largest fast-fashion retailer. Public information shows that SHEIN's revenue in 2022 has reached $22.7 billion, with profits exceeding $700 million.

According to data from Apptopia, in 2022, SHEIN became the world's top shopping app in terms of annual downloads, with 229 million downloads, even surpassing Amazon.

With its strong growth momentum, SHEIN's IPO rumors have been circulating in the past two years, and it is only a matter of time before SHEIN goes public. Senior cross-border e-commerce expert Lin Zhiyong told Wall Street News that in terms of sales volume, financial performance, and organizational adjustments, SHEIN's listing can be said to be "everything is ready, only the east wind is owed."

For a company preparing to go public, the reputation and capabilities of the management team are also very important. As the founder, Xu Yangtian has always been low-key and mysterious, and the image of other members of the founding team is not clear in the eyes of the outside world.

At this critical time of going public, SHEIN also urgently needs someone skilled in capital operations, just like Cai Chongxin for Alibaba, to give the company wings to take off.

A securities researcher told Wall Street News that Xu Yangtian has successively brought in managers with international influence such as Tang Wei and Claire, most likely for this reason.

It can be seen that after Tang Wei joined, he took on more communication work with investors. In a letter to SHEIN investors disclosed in July this year, Tang Wei revealed that driven by sales in the United States, SHEIN achieved record profits in the first half of 2023, and the total value of goods traded in Brazil doubled this year.

Now, with the addition of well-known investors and capital operation experts, the combat capability of SHEIN's management team will be more comprehensive, and its internationalization will be clearer, which will help Xu Yangtian lead SHEIN to achieve faster success.

However, Lin Zhiyong pointed out that Xu Yangtian has long paved the way for going public, and now the focus is on achieving stronger performance growth, with an emphasis on platformization and localization strategies.

In addition, some investment bankers have stated that in a high-interest rate environment, the valuations of companies planning to go public and companies in the growth stage are affected to some extent, and SHEIN is also under pressure from valuation shrinkage.

In the latest round of financing in May 2023, SHEIN was valued at $66 billion, compared to $100 billion a year ago.

To strengthen investor confidence, SHEIN set an ambitious growth target at the beginning of this year.

SHEIN revealed to investors that its revenue will double by 2025, reaching $58.5 billion, equivalent to the total annual sales of retail giants H&M and Zara. In addition, by 2025, the total value of goods traded on the SHEIN platform will increase to $80.6 billion, a 174% increase from 2022, and profits will increase to $7.5 billion.

Under this goal, platformization and localization have become important strategies for driving strong performance growth for SHEIN.

Under the platformization strategy, more third-party sellers will join SHEIN, promoting its transformation into a comprehensive e-commerce platform and achieving strong growth in scale. Currently, SHEIN's platformization model has been launched in Brazil, the United States, Mexico, and is further expanding into global markets such as Europe.

More transformative than platformization is the localization strategy. Through the localization of the supply chain, SHEIN can more smoothly integrate into the local business ecosystem, drive local employment, and avoid some policy risks. This is a strategy with more room for imagination and is also the essence of internationalization. Xu Yangtian from Qingdao and Zibo is currently making waves on the other side of the ocean, but whether he can become the next Jack Ma or Huang Zheng still remains to be seen. Time will tell.