Singapore's Rich List TOP50 wants to add a new Chinese immigrant?
According to Reuters, the cross-border fast fashion clothing brand SHEIN may change its holding entity to a Singapore company, and its founder and CEO Xu Yangtian has also become a permanent resident of Singapore. In addition, the information of Tianyancha shows that 7 domestic companies with Xu Yangtian as the legal representative have all been shown to be deregistered.
SHEIN said in response to the interface fashion inquiry that China is still an important center, and will set up centers in various core markets with localization as the goal, such as the United States, Singapore, etc., and Xu Yangtian is still a Chinese citizen.
In January, 36Kr reuters reported that SHEIN was considering restarting its IPO plan to the United States, expected to be listed in New York as early as this year, when it was reported that Xu Yangtian was considering changing his nationality to go overseas for an IPO. SHEIN denied the news that there were no plans to go public, and that neither founder Xu Yangtian nor other executives applied to change their nationality.
According to Singapore's relevant policies, it is only after two years of becoming a singapore permanent resident that you can be eligible to apply for Singapore citizenship. Based on this, although SHEIN's official response to Xu Yangtian is still a Chinese citizen, it still cannot be ruled out that he is seeking Singaporean citizenship.
According to the "2021 Hurun Rich List", Xu Yangtian is worth 40 billion yuan (about 6.3 billion US dollars), combined with the Forbes "2021 Singapore Rich List TOP50" list, if Xu Yangtian really becomes a Singaporean, his net worth will rank 11th after Mindray Medical Li Xiting, Haidilao Daniel Zhang, Sea Group Li Xiaodong and other newly immigrated Chinese billionaires.
As soon as the news of the suspected change of nationality came out, the company with a valuation of tens of billions of dollars and its low-key founder once again attracted attention.
Xu Yangtian, the founder of the post-80s generation, rarely appears in public, and SHEIN, a company that rarely appears in media reports, is behind the low-key behavior in China, but it is a big fist in the world. At present, SHEIN is mainly for Europe, the United States, the Middle East and other markets, covering more than 220 countries and regions around the world.
According to the Beijing News, on May 17, 2021, SHEIN replaced Amazon as the most downloaded shopping app for iOS and Android platforms in the United States, ranking first among iOS shopping apps in 54 countries. According to a number of news media reports, in 2020, SHEIN's revenue will be close to 10 billion US dollars (about 65.3 billion yuan). By early 2021, the company's post-investment valuation had reached $50 billion.
Xu Yangtian, the helmsman behind SHEIN's high valuation and internationalization, is a Shandong native who came out of Zibo. The entrepreneur, who rarely appears on the Internet, used to be a cold student who worked and studied half-time in high school and college. Behind SHEIN is the story of a poor Shandong Man who counterattacked to a billionaire.
A
Xu Yangtian was born in Zibo, Shandong in 1984, and from some of the only information, Xu Yangtian did not grow up in a wealthy environment.
Li Peng, who once worked with Xu Yangtian, once described that when he first met Xu Yangtian, he was "as lean as a monkey." And Xu Yangtian also mentioned his poor birth, when he was a child, he was "steamed bun soaking soy sauce", he worked outside in his third year of high school, and the university was also half-working and half-studying at Qingdao University of Science and Technology. In Li Peng's words, "Some people are forced to be diligent."
Perhaps it was this experience that made Xu Yangtian accustomed to low-key handling and more diligence in his later development. Working across borders may also be closely related to his first job after graduation. It is understood that Xu Yangtian was responsible for SEO (search engine optimization) in a foreign trade online marketing company after graduation, and it was also during this period that Xu Yangtian and two other partners founded Nanjing Dianwei Information Technology Co., Ltd.
In 2008, China's cross-border e-commerce was in the start-up period, and some B2C websites began to emerge. Wang Shutong, founder of cross-border e-commerce DHgate, once posted that between 2008 and 2011, the first golden age of cross-border e-commerce appeared, and a large number of IT and traditional foreign traders seized the business opportunities of cross-border e-commerce to quickly grow bigger, and achieved a number of "small and beautiful" companies that made a lot of money.
In the cross-border e-commerce category at that time, wedding dresses were second only to digital products in the cross-border e-commerce category. According to the "Late Post" report, a person familiar with the matter said that even the purchase price of the wedding dress was changed to US dollars directly to sell. This allowed Xu Yangtian to see the opportunity to do wedding dress business and make a lot of money. However, in this process, according to Li Peng, who was working together to start a business at the time, it was Xu Yangtian who ran away with his SEO team, and the former three-person team also fell apart.
It was also during the period when Xu Yangtian was selling wedding dresses that Li Peng started a cross-border women's clothing business. In 2011, Li Peng launched the women's clothing brand ROMWE and became extremely popular.
In 2012, Xu Yangtian also began to do cross-border women's clothing business, and fixed the domain name of the website as Shernside, and also acquired Li Peng's ROMWE in 2014. It is understood that at that time, ROMWE was deeply mired in losses, and founder Li Peng almost let go. Since then, Xu Yangtian has started the dual brand operation of SHEIN and ROMWE.
According to the Beijing News, citing informed sources, the model of SHEIN's rise and development is mainly KOL (key opinion leader) + supply chain. In the early days, SHEIN would find some Internet celebrities to promote, and when the price of Internet celebrities was relatively cheap, it slowly began to do it. In 2016, Pei Xuan, then the general manager of SHEIN Mobile, also said on a forum that in 2011, all SHEIN traffic came from Internet celebrities.
The opportunity to change Xu Yangtian's fate came at the end of 2014. At this time, SHEIN orders suddenly increased, but according to the previous sales model, all of them could not be stocked. According to Late Post, a SHEIN executive said that the disadvantage at that time was that so many SKUs could not be fully stocked, resulting in rising marketing costs.
This made Xu Yangtian start to decide to do the supply chain. According to reports, he set up a design team from Nanjing to Guangzhou, but only a few hundred orders were directly rejected by the factory because the cost was too high. In this case, Xu Yangtian resisted the pressure of high costs and used high-priced sales abroad to subsidize the factory. In addition, Xu Yangtian's habit of never defaulting on payment has also earned him a reputation in the factory.
In the following years, SHEIN not only entered the European and American markets, but also successfully entered the Middle East, Southeast Asia and other markets. It is worth noting that the merchants who have previously entered the Middle East market are reducing the proportion of cash on delivery of orders, which can be controlled at most about 60%, and Xu Yangtian directly reduced this proportion to 30%, quickly opening up the Middle East market. In 2018, SHERN's sales, the Middle East market is comparable to the European market, accounting for 20%.
In 2020 under the epidemic, due to SHEIN's online operation, the revenue of the year was close to about 10 billion US dollars (about 65.3 billion yuan).
B
Like many fast fashion brands, the fast-growing SHEIN also faces some infringement disputes, and its extremely fast update time for new products has also led to a certain extent that SHEIN is deeply suspected of plagiarism.
The Financial Times reported in June that SHEIN was facing infringement complaints filed by some apparel brands, with some saying SHEIN's success was due to "deliberate and calculated" trademark infringement.
AirWair International, the parent company of the Dr. Martens brand, reportedly sued SHEIN. In the indictment, the company noted that SHEIN "had a clear intention to sell fakes" and said that one of the "Martin boots" listed on SHEIN's website, as well as more than 20 other styles, were similar to what Dr Martens sold and sold for much cheaper than the genuines. In addition, the company also accused fast fashion cross-border e-commerce Romwe of "not only directly copying" its designs, but also using "genuine Dr Martens photos to induce customers to buy fakes."
SHEIN denied the allegations.
It is not only the big brands that are suspected of infringing, but also the small brands that are jointly condemning SHEIN on social platforms. The reason is that in June last year, Kikay, an American Los Angeles earwear e-commerce brand, pointed out on social media Instagram that a pair of frog earring products sold by the SHEIN platform were very similar to the original design earrings launched in November 2020, questioning its own design and putting up comparative pictures and descriptions.
The blog post has attracted more than a thousand comments from netizens, including some small fashion retailers, and according to the founders of Kikay, some of the small fashion retailers in the comments have also said that they have similar experiences of infringement.
After being publicly defended by the Kikay brand, SHEIN removed the controversial earrings. The Financial Times reported that SHEIN eventually apologized to Kikay and promised not to work again with suppliers of allegedly infringing goods, while SHEIN also said in a statement that it had "considerable respect" for the artists and designers.
It was also reported that before AirWair filed the lawsuit, SHEIN was also sued by Levi Strauss in 2018 on the grounds of trademark infringement and unfair competition, and the two parties ended in an undisclosed settlement.
These infringement suspicions have led to criticism of SHEIN's overseas development, according to the BBC, the young designer competition organized by it has attracted questions on social media, questioning why some fashion designers and celebrities such as Kohler Kardashian have stood for them.
In addition, as an e-commerce brand, traffic can be said to be the cornerstone of SHEIN's prosperity and survival.
In the early days, the image social network Pinterest was SHEIN's largest source of traffic. According to LatePost, a person familiar with the matter said that in 2013-2014, Pinterest was sheln's first source of traffic.
In a BBC report on why SHEIN is making a splash among young people in the West, a founder of a research firm claimed: "For a retailer without a physical store and a company that is almost unknown to everyone but its target audience, SHEIN uses social media to reach consumers directly, and it has become arguably the largest digital clothing retailer." ”
Data from Last May showed that SHEIN has replaced Amazon as the most downloaded shopping app for iOS and Android platforms in the United States. Social media is now a major propaganda front and source of traffic for SHEIN, such as YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, etc.
TikTok's overseas traffic advantage is beyond doubt, according to official data, TikTok's global monthly active users reached 1 billion in September 2021. And this kind of traffic is perhaps what Xu Yangtian needs most. According to the expected financial report, the research report of investment institutions in the field of cross-border e-commerce shows that SHEIN 2021 "All-in" TikTok.
However, with TikTok personally doing cross-border e-commerce business, as well as The overseas sea of Chinese e-commerce such as Ali, foreign Internet giants such as YouTube and Meta are also increasing e-commerce, and SHEIN's living space is being challenged.
C
When discussing whether Xu Yangtian will become a Singaporean, it is inevitable to think of Daniel Zhang, founder of Haidilao, Li Xiting, chairman of Mindray Medical, Li Xiaodong, founder of Donghai Group, and Liu Chang, daughter of Liu Yonghao, the richest man in Sichuan, who all joined Singapore nationality first.
In September 2018, Haidilao went public in Hong Kong. It was also at this time that the outside world found that in the prospectus submitted by Haidilao, the nationality of Daniel Zhang and his wife Shu Ping had been changed to Singapore. According to The China Visitation Network, before the listing of Haidilao's Hong Kong stocks, Daniel Zhang and Shu Ping set up a trust in Singapore.
Also in 2018, when Mindray Medical, which was delisted from the US stock market, returned to the A-share listing, its chairman Li Xiting was also found to have been naturalized in Singapore. It is understood that in 2018, Li Xiting became a Singapore citizen through the GIP Global Investor Program.
Under the influence of the global epidemic, Mindray Medical's stock price ushered in a sharp rise, Li Xiting's net worth also rose, according to Forbes data, its net worth increased from $17.8 billion in 2020 to $23 billion in 2021, surpassing Daniel Zhang and becoming the new richest man in Singapore.
It was also when New Hope Dairy planned to list on the A-share market, Liu Chang, the daughter of Liu Yonghao, was also exposed to have already joined the Singapore nationality. In September 2017, New Hope Dairy's IPO filings published on the CSRC's website showed that Liu Chang was a Singaporean national. According to the Observer Network, in January 2012, Liu Chang obtained Singaporean citizenship and officially immigrated to Singapore.
In recent years, Singapore has begun to become a bridgehead for Chinese technology companies to go to sea, becoming a "place where soldiers must fight".
Since 2013, Chinese companies have flocked to Southeast Asia. In October of that year, Alibaba set up "Singapore Taobao" and began to attack the southeast Asian map, investing $249 million in Singapore Post in 2014 and acquiring Lazada, southeast Asia's largest e-commerce platform, in 2016. Tencent also acquired a stake in Singaporean game company Garena in 2013, founded by Li Xiaodong, a Tianjin native who became a Singaporean national, and on the eve of the Sea listing in 2017, Tencent became its largest shareholder.
Baidu, on the other hand, also established a joint laboratory with singapore's Science and Technology Research Agency as early as 2012, and Baidu Games also invested in Singapore's game studio Inzen, which was acquired by Australian company iCandy for $4.4 million in 2017.
ByteDance was also rumored to have headquartered in Singapore in Asia (excluding China) in 2020 and plans to invest billions of dollars in Singapore over the next three years. It is worth noting that the current global CEO of TikTok is also a weekly capital from Singapore.
Around the same time, Tencent chose OCBC Centre East, not far from Byte, to rent a shared office as its first office in Singapore. Alibaba also acquired a 50% stake in AXA Insurance Tower in Singapore for SG$1.68 billion.
Under the wave of Chinese technology companies going to Southeast Asia, some of China's richest people began to immigrate to Singapore. An industry investor told Alphabet that Singapore trusts have certain advantages. For example, exemption from capital gains tax, reduction of income tax on foreign trusts, etc. These loose tax policies have also become one of the reasons why the rich choose Singapore.
Resources:
"Demystifying SHEIN: The Rise of China's Most Mysterious $10 Billion Company" later in LatePost
SHEIN: Why Chinese Brands Are Making a Splash among Young People in the West, BBC
"Chinese e-commerce platform SHEIN faces trademark infringement disputes", Financial Times
"Chinese cross-border e-commerce unicorn SHEIN responds to headquarters relocated to Singapore" interface news
"SHEIN Wealth Code: Chinese-style grass + Made in China" Beijing News
"Daniel Zhang couple, Lee Citing: the dispute between the richest man in Singapore in Chinese"
"Ali Tencent started an all-out war in Southeast Asia, did not expect to be killed by Baidu a cut-off Hu" Pintu Business Review