The incredibly popular online apparel retailer SHEIN will make its presence felt in Houston on Saturday (May 13) in a “pop-up” block party experience at Dun Huang Plaza, 9889 Bellaire Blvd. in the Southwest Management District.
The free event, from noon to 8 p.m., will feature the sale of samples of SHEIN’s online offerings. Live iHeart Radio DJs will provide music. Local vendors will also be on hand for the expected large crowd in a tented outdoor space surrounded by year-round restaurants and other Asian-themed shops.
Singapore-based SHEIN is among the world’s largest retailers, according to news reports. It has hosted pop-up events at locations across the globe for the past year or so for customers to experience the brand and its products in person rather than just online.
The “fast fashion” women’s clothing company held a pop-up in Paris, France last week where a crowd estimated at 8,000-strong swarmed its displays of goods.
“It allows us to have more opportunities for greater interaction with our customers and brand fans,” a spokesman said.
The Houston block party, in the shopping center’s central plaza, is being held to officially celebrate May’s Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month.
The diverse Southwest District includes the suburban Chinatown and the Gandhi District, along with the Sharpstown area and restaurants serving food based on recipes from Vietnam, China, Thailand, Malaysia, Latin America, Japan, Korea, Africa, Pakistan, India and more.
Local artists invited to the event will create permanent art installations sponsored by SHEIN. The company’s Art Discovery Program aims to “shine light on culture and history in smaller communities within larger metropolitan areas, through art and fashion,” said Jane Lee Fosburg, the company’s director of brand partnerships.
SHEIN, founded in 2012, has taken the e-retail world by storm by making “the beauty of fashion accessible to all,” the company says.
It employs on-demand manufacturing technology to connect suppliers across the globe to its supply chain to deliver products to customers in 150 nations.
The company has grown into a viral colossus, using social media platforms like TikTok to drive sales among so-called Gen Z consumers and others. Its agile online presence delivers more than 6,000 new fashion, beauty and lifestyle products daily with more than 600,000 relatively inexpensive items available.
According to analysts, SHEIN earned $24 billion last year and is valued by some estimates at more than four times that amount.
The company was founded by a Chinese American exchange student, Chris Xu, a marketing wiz who is now one of China’s richest people. Xu keeps a low profile, but Chinese news outlets report that he was an average student who worked to support himself while attending George Washington University in Washington, D.C.
SHEIN pop-up event
Dun Huang Plaza, 9889 Bellaire Blvd. Houston
Noon to 8 p.m. Saturday, May 13, 2023
