Combine that with Shein’s huge volume of 1st party data through its app from around the globe and software-human teams that scour competitors’ sites, and Shein understands what clothes consumers want now better than anyone with the possible exception of Amazon.

Shein feeds that data to its massive in-house design and prototyping team who can get a product from drawing board to production and live-online in as little as three-days. Because Shein is located in the heart of Guangzhou, Chi

around as small as 10 items, and then adjust up from there. Once a product is live, Shein creates more 1st party data, which it uses to automatically adjust production on the fly. It’s doing this with tens of thousands of new SKUs every day.

Through it, they receive updates on new orders instantly based on consumer behavior, and send back real-time inventory and capacity data.

Imagine that a new item, designed based on Shein’s own and 3rd party data, goes live on the website, and immediately starts getting user behaviors correlated to sales (i.e. X number browsing product details, X number added to shopping cart). Based on taps, clicks, and sales, an algorithm doubles the production quota, which is immediately updated on the factory floor with extra materials automatically ordered. A second algorithm updates the weightings and recommends the item to more users with similar profiles. That’s impossibly fast to compete with.

10% off and free returns on your first order to encourage shopping quickly without worrying about what happens if the product isn’t good,

Highlights the value prop of 1,000+ new items per day to encourage you to come back
Announces Afterpay to remove even more friction from buying
Asks which category you want to shop to better personalize the experience
Prompts you to turn on notifications, to encourage repeat usage and build the addiction
Offers 15-20% off when you sign in within a week, to get you to create an account

Generous points system: earn rewards for daily log ins, design games, verifying email, and more. Matthew verified his email, left a few reviews, and already has almost $3 in points.
Incentivised Reviews: Reviews are particularly important in fashion ecommerce as a way to reduce expensive return rates. Star ratings don’t tell you much. Pictures tell you a lot. Guess what Shein incentivises with points—pictures with the user’s size information. This allows shoppers to more accurately judge if something will fit them.
User-Generated Content (UGC): Inspired by Little Red Book and Taobao, Shein encourages UGC. Users can gain followers to their profile and be showcased in the app modelling the clothes they buy, building loyalty to the brand, providing more pictures for other users to judge suitability of items, and creating a content feed that keeps users hooked.
Livestream Events & Retailtainment: Like a mini Alibaba 11.11 event, Shein has #SHEINtogetherfest featuring influencers like Nick Jonas, Mareen Morris, Steve Aoki, and Hailey Beiber.
Recommendations: The Shein app experience is more one of a discovery driven recommendation feed rather than a primarily search driven experience. China’s mobile ecommerce is an environment where recommendation traffic far outweighs search driven traffic. Heavy reliance on recommendation over search is a common thread that runs through the world of Chinese mobile internet. Accordingly, there’s a huge pool of expertise built up around ecommerce recommendation, as showcased in this paper.

JOKR and Personalized Instant Commerce

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