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Hi there,
A couple of years ago, I made two orders on Shein and wasn’t satisfied with them at all – the quality was below par.
At the time, I didn’t realize the scale of the ultrafast-fashion giant, which at one point reportedly had a US$100 billion valuation. The China-based firm can launch thousands of new items daily. Needless to say, this can have a detrimental effect on the environment.
Tech in Asia was one of the earliest publications to explain the rise of Shein in this July 2021 piece. We also explored whether incumbents in Southeast Asia should be worried about this behemoth that seemingly came out of nowhere.
One such incumbent is Love Bonito, a direct-to-consumer fashion retailer based in Singapore. However, Love Bonito CEO Dione Song has repeatedly stressed that the company, unlike Shein, targets customers in their mid to late 20s and all the way through to their late 30s with a preference for quality over discounted prices.
In this week’s Big Story, my colleague, Melissa, explains why Love Bonito has to evolve from the pure D2C model into a lifestyle ecosystem for its customers.
More interestingly, Love Bonito is planning to open its first offline store in the US next year – a market Shein has dominated in terms of fast fashion. Love Bonito is betting that its Asian flair will win over US customers even during a recession.
However, the future of shopping might lie at neither online sites nor offline stores but somewhere on the metaverse – at least that’s what some Web3 enthusiasts would argue.
Our Hot Take this week highlights an interesting move by Indian e-commerce major Flipkart to launch Flipverse. Maybe we’ll even see a metaverse version of Shopee and Lazada soon?
– Huong
THE BIG STORY
Can Love Bonito triumph over a D2C model under threat?
Image credit: Timmy Loen
The Singapore-based womenswear brand is building a female ecosystem beyond fashion as it works toward an IPO in the US.
THE HOT TAKE
NEWS YOU SHOULD KNOW
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